Rustynuts Posted July 20, 2005 Report Share Posted July 20, 2005 I just received the weekly copy of newsletter from Spywareinfo.com, and the first issue addressed is detailed as follows. Quote: - "First there were the rumors that Microsoft is considering buying Claria, the company responsible for creating and distributing Gator adware. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that Microsoft's antispyware program has been altered by a program update to ignore all adware automatically. This seems almost like a repeat of the situation with Yahoo's antispyware toolbar last year. Yahoo and Claria have significant financial dealings through Overture, which is owned by Yahoo. Claria makes the bulk of its income through Overture. Not long after Yahoo included an antispyware scanner into their Internet Explorer toolbar, it was discovered that they had altered it to ignore adware. Yahoo's toolbar uses spyware detection code licensed from PestPatrol (now owned by Computer Associates). PestPatrol's own antispyware program did not have the ability to ignore all adware, only individual products if the user chose to ignore them. After experiencing a massive run of bad publicity, Yahoo changed their toolbar so that it would detect adware by default. Microsoft's first response to questions about their antispyware program ignoring Claria was to refuse to comment. Their second response was to flatly deny that Claria is receiving any special favors. They claim now that the change was made in order to be "fair and consistent" with how Microsoft AntiSpy handles adware from companies similar to Claria. As it turns out, several adware products have been placed on AntiSpy's ignore list. Whatever the reason, this means that Gator, Dashbar and other adware could install on a computer supposedly protected by Microsoft AntiSpy, without warnings popping up. Since Microsoft altered their users' settings without informing them, those users may not realize that they have to change their ignore list in order to detect these adware programs. If a user runs a scan of their hard drive, those adware programs will not show up in the results because they are on the ignore list. The question that needs to be asked now is: "Can Microsoft's AntiSpy program be trusted?". It is bad enough that they decided to move all adware products to the ignore list by default. However loudly the adware industry screams that their software is not malicious, the fact remains that very few people want it on their computer. People use antispyware scanners because they expect them to find adware as well as the truly malicious stuff. The problem is that Microsoft used an update to the program to alter their users' settings, without informing them. They may think that adware should be on the ignore list but I seriously doubt that their users would agree. Their users expected that the program would alert them to the presence of adware. Since as far back as late March, these users have been unprotected by a program they were told they could trust. Well, that trust has been broken. Can this program ever be trusted again? Update After I wrote this but, thankfully, before sending it out, more rumors have surfaced about the Microsoft/Claria acquisition talks. According to an article on ClickZ News, Microsoft has abandoned the idea of purchasing Claria. It would seem that the bad press they received over the rumor caused them to abandon the idea. I believe that odd sound you hear is the entire internet breathing a sigh of relief." End quote. Interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarMad Posted July 21, 2005 Report Share Posted July 21, 2005 More reason than any if you ask me to always use more than one. I have found MS Anti to be very poor at finding anything considering its the only software that runs regularly and sits in the background. Adaware and Spybot always seem to find more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loddrik Posted July 21, 2005 Report Share Posted July 21, 2005 Don't really know much about IT matters but I have found it to be the other way around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Posted July 21, 2005 Report Share Posted July 21, 2005 I've found MS antispyware to be excellent and often the others I have installed are unaware of threats. It's auto-updated itself this morning (3rd time now) so they appear to be ontop of these problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shark_90 Posted July 21, 2005 Report Share Posted July 21, 2005 Not sure what to think. I've tried lots of different spyware programs and I tend to find some find threats that others dont.. so I use them all at once Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarMad Posted July 21, 2005 Report Share Posted July 21, 2005 Just as a test I have just run all three on both of my PCs. MS Anti - Found nothing on either PC. Ad-aware - 42 things on Laptop and 19 on the PC. Some important others not. Spybot - 11 on the PC and a massive 93 on my laptop. I hadn't run Ad-aware or Spybot for a month, but MS Anti runs all the time. I certainly wouldn't rely on it after doing the above back to back test. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomk Posted July 21, 2005 Report Share Posted July 21, 2005 i use spybots and addawre run both regually , and once a month just re flash my pc back with ghost to a 'clean image ' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Posted July 21, 2005 Report Share Posted July 21, 2005 I find ad-aware to report things that aren't threats. Removed those files/reg keys and normal programs stopped working. Not good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Durrsaku Posted July 21, 2005 Report Share Posted July 21, 2005 Yes i have had the same experience too but they all do that really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FiftyPence Posted July 23, 2005 Report Share Posted July 23, 2005 Spybot and AdAware for me and they seem to work well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruiser647 Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 It's Microsoft, bound not to work, but will be free, dirt cheap or 'bundled' and not work with other spyware progs! Hence they will get market share and put the others out of business. The usual Microsoft Business Model. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 Your MS comments are about as fresh as Skoda-bashing comments are. The program has done much better on our systems than any of the others have. It's not going to be free unless they've changed their minds recently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruiser647 Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 [ QUOTE ] Your MS comments are about as fresh as Skoda-bashing comments are. [/ QUOTE ] Ahh, but the comments are true. That has long been Microsoft business model. Now they are trying to change their image as a result of numerous company actions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 I meant this bit "bound not to work" You got the business model spot on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schmoo Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 thing is ad-aware isnt made by microsoft so that cant be a bad thing and its been around longer than the M$ equivalent too. i have the ms one running all the time and ad-aware still picks stuff up (use it weekly) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Posted July 25, 2005 Report Share Posted July 25, 2005 Microsoft AntiSpyware wasn't made my Microsoft either Giant made it, and they've been around much longer than some of the others. MS simply bought them out and made it look nicer and then integrated it with Spynet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgl Posted July 27, 2005 Report Share Posted July 27, 2005 Having spent a couple of hours today trying to sort out an issue when I browse our internal workgroup in the office (message comes back stating "server is not configured for transactions"). I have concluded that MS anti spyware is a bag of shite! It has not picked up anything on my machine. One interesting thing I have discovered though is that spy doctor (free to download and run) comes back and tells you there are a ridiculous number of infections. Then you have to pay to clean them. Makes me wonder if it is just marketing BS. Anyway, anyone know how to overcome the server is not configured for transactions problem? I have tried net share $IPC! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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