Microsoft Anti Spyware Revisited

We have all had some time to evaluate this application now. I thought it might be good to see if any of us have any cause to change, what appears, in this thread: http://www.antionline.com/newreply.p...hreadid=265121
to be a favourable assasment of it's performance.

From my own point of view, my first impression was very good as it found a registry entry for coolweb search that Adaware SE and Spybot had missed. I had the same false possitive as others with wincap, but that presented no problems.

However it has just run a scheduled scan and logged my IE home page, www.bbc.co.uk/radio2 as a possible high jack attempt with a severe threat label. I set that page manualy, I listen to the radio alot. Now, I can be quite cynical where microsoft is concerned, sometimes. That said, if i had let the aplication do it's thing, I bet it would have re-set my home page to MSN.

Thoughts anyone.

Well, I posted an article about how the microsoft tool still needs alot of work. I don't think i'll be using it until it's out of beta, and that's a maybe.

The thread can be found here: http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=265470

If you would have allowed it to fix your homepage, it indeed would have set it to MSN, because that is the default setting under advanced options. You can specify whatever home page you wish it to be reset to in case of infection. :D

Also, there is a known bug where it sometimes resets it when there are multiple user accounts, and fast switching is enabled.

IMHO

It works just aswell as any other spyware removal program. With its subtle differences obviously...

The problem im having with AntiSpyware (and many many other M$ apps) is when they're just not listening to the consumer, or designing it for JUST the people who have nfi what a computer is.

So far, its all been small things. ie, sheduled scans doesnt notify enough when comp being used -> pops up for a few seconds, then disappers, until tskmanager tells me its running.

Well, thats all off the top of my head. And dont worry, ive been making a list and sending it to their techies, not to bitch, to give some more user feedback.

But i do see myself using it ALONG with other scanners

IMHO

I had a problem where I couldnt set IE's default page to blank without the M$ product replacing it with MSN -- the only way I found to fix that was to turn off the home page protection. I'm ok with this because I use SpySweeper's protection, WinPatrol and some other products to protect me. Not to mention I only use IE to access known safe sites -- Mozilla's (with ActiveX and Java turned off) my default browser.

It's an OK product but so far it has been very aggressive in marking things as spyware AND has even detected some items by filename and not signature -- which is bad. This was mentioned by someone else here as well.

The product seems to detect and alert for more things than just spyware: it calls out security tools as well. So I wonder what M$ has planned for the product: turn it into a spyware and virus/worm/trojan detection program? IMO the distinction between spyware and virus is starting to blur.

Jinxy > In the US, the BBC is considered communist... you're lucky you didn't get arrested!

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by Negative
Jinxy > In the US, the BBC is considered communist... you're lucky you didn't get arrested!

---

He lives with a radical-far-right nut, so take that with a grain of salt. ;)

Quote:

---

Jinxy > In the US, the BBC is considered communist... you're lucky you didn't get arrested!

---

I can see why the US would think that, after all it's funded by a licence fee. Is none commecial, so some may feel it's as evil as open souce :D

Plus Americans are nuts, don't forget that ;)

One thing i think everyones forgoten is that it is still a beta. Of course there are going to be some problems with it that microsoft will still have to work out. Ive never seen ANY beta release perform flawlessly. The official bitching doesnt come untill its an RC

I'll be the glutton for punishment here and actually praise MS for this little tool. I've recently installed it on the network I work on (what the hell were these guys thinking when they started trusting me to take care of their network is beyond me :eek: ). Anyways, to make a long story longer....it actually works well (found a few items SB and AA missed). Mainly all the boxes on the network are XP and the server is 2K. No problems as of yet. But that stupid little dart board icon is, well, stupid. Yes, I'm actually bitching about the icon. sue me. Other than that, I have no complaints.

I always thought the BBC to be conservative? :)