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February 17, 2005
Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) For my PC using chums.
5 Comments on “Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta)”
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i wonder if this is basically the same thing that keeps coming up in my windows XP ’security update’ every morning – which annoys the hell out of me, & try as i might to remove it from the list of updates that I want – it keeps coming back…
I doubt it seeing as it’s a beta release, but what do I know….
There’s some speculation that this might be a bad thing long term if MS continue to give it away free. All the other anti-virus companies will give up in the face of MS and we’re back to the monoculture problem again.
the reason i suspect it might be is because of the functionality – the security update on my work XP machine states ‘malicious software removal tool’ or some such – & presumably is embedded in XP, as it were – whereas this beta thing is a standalone application – so not using XP ‘hooks’.
but i don’t see this as being ‘anti virus’ per se – so the thing about it generating the typical ‘MS monoculture’ may be a false argument at this stage. I would imagine that the makers of spybot & adaware are sitting up & taking notice, but then they are coming from a differing angle… I really can’t imagine Microsoft taking such a thorough approach as they do: scouring out cookies & so forth – because said cookies are often part of the ‘corporate’ thinking to which MS subscribe…
I would imagine that ‘corporate’ anti virus people like Norton (who have the lion’s share of that market) will be worried – they are the ones that will suffer in those terms… but these are *Microsft products* that are being released – so I imagine that malware & virus writers are rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of the attacks they may forge into these applications that the user will implicitly trust.
there will always be people writing better (often free) software for windows than MS could ever manage. MS naturally have the advantage by knowing all (well – possibly some) of the hooks in their OS to make things work better – but look at the range of applications out there to play music on a PC as an example – tiny applications that use hardly any resources like ‘coolplayer’ for example – sod the corporate world.
oh – & Internet Explorer 7 is on the way, i hear…
i summer release…
will it smash Firefoxe’s bold grab of the market share?
will it hell as like – Internet Explorer 7 is only available for Windowx XP Service 2.
great!
The Malicious Software Removal Tool is totally separate to the AntiSpyware Beta tool.
The former is a transient program that runs as part of the monthly update process (it doesn’t get installed onto the PC’s hard disk) and just deals with the most prevalent security risks at the time. The latter is a fully featured program that gets installed onto the PC and updates itself on a daily basis.
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx