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Two Reviews of Microsoft AntiSpyware
jasondubya writes "PC Magazine released their review of Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Beta 1. While they agree with most that it has great potential, it has yet to take over their top spot. In an informal test, it removed about two-thirds of the spyware detected and blocked about fifty percent of the threats they attempted to install. After removal, they ran Webroot's Spy Sweeper 3.0. It was able to detect '900 traces of 48 distinct threats still present, including two keyloggers and three Trojans.' With that, it looks like Microsoft still has work to do before they are on top of the market." Several other readers sent in link to Mossberg's review in the WSJ.
I've used it and ...
I liked it! It scanned like 500 spywares in my computer, all of them due to Internet Explorer Bugs(hey, i've used it only for 2 days since I formated my computer). The software is fast, gives information about the spywares and asks you what you wanna do. If I had to rate it I would give 9/10.
MS AntiSpyware is /extremely/ fast - faster than anything else I've tried - but didn't catch any advertisement cookies in Mozilla Firefox and only caught a very small number of them from IE. It also complains loudly about a number of things I use on a regular basis - FTP server, VNC, even a copy of SoftICE (which, yes, I use legitimately to debug device drivers).
Could be good with some work, though.
This flies in the face of science.
Even though it says you need to "validate" Windows, it prompts you after you click the download link, and then you can click "no." Good news for me^H^Hthe pirates out there with illegitimate XP copies.
While these articles are mostly true, they seemed still to be biased against microsoft. Although i value /. and go along with its beliefs against a certain company, there are more balanced views out there...
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http://www.flexbeta.net/main/articles.php?actio
In the articles here, they only say that some stuff was not removed by antispyware. But they never said if microfsoft antispyware picked up stuff others missed. Article above does this test.
-SystemERRor
Built-in XP firewall - Pretty much everyone disabled it and installed another.
Internet Explorer - Lets all the spyware in in the first place. Firefox is ten times better.
MS Office - Don't even need to say how bad it is.
Windows itself - Ditto.
MS AntiSpyware - Only gets rid of two-thirds of spyware. Mostly just more bloatware.
Nope. I'm not very surprised.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Few would be aware that chopsticks originated in America in the 1800's because it is not true.o logy/ut ensil/chpstck.htm
http://www.calacademy.org/research/anthrop
The Chinese have been using them for several thousand years. This unfortunately detracts from an otherwise inciteful post.
"[Few] seem aware that chopsticks originated in American mining communities" because it didn't - chopsticks have been in use in China for at least 4000 years.
Get a clue.
I'm not the world's biggest fan of Microsoft -- I've pretty well shorn myself of everything but XP and Word -- but I have to admit that it's not bad. Caught some minor stuff after I hadn't done a scan with Ad-Aware in a while and cleaned them up. Not the best, nowhere near the worst.
Interestingly, one service still says "GIANT Antispyware Data Service". I guess they didn't rebadge it all yet.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
On this box with Windows 98, XP and Mandrake, Microsoft Antispyware told me the machine had a severe threat -- "Attacker has complete control over your computer or install new software on your machine." The offending file was "SCRRUN.DLL" in the Windows directory, which Antispyware labeled as "Specrem RAT." The file was there from a fresh reinstall of Windows 98 off the official Microsoft CD from the last millenium, from the "win98_64.cab" file. Aside from the bad grammar of the warning, I think it was wrong.
Otherwise, it did fine.
There's a tendancy for people to equate "found more stuff" with "better". Don't forget that false positives are an issue.
I have to say, I'm basically at a loss to explain why there's been a lot of positive press about Webroot's Spy Sweeper 3.0 recently. This PC Mag. review is just the latest in "shoot-outs" and reviews I've read that gave Spy Sweeper top (or near top) honors.
My personal experience, doing on-site PC service calls for a living, is completely different. I've cleaned literally hundreds of spyware infested PCs for customers in the last year or so, and I *often* find they have Spy Sweeper already installed and running, despite all their problems.
People occasionally ask me if Spy Sweeper is "any good" since companies like Gateway like to try selling it to them over the phone when they call with problems. I've been advising to save the money and skip it.
It may have a nice interface and claimed "feature set" - but from what I've observed, it doesn't really seem to be that effective at keeping spyware out, or detecting it after the fact.
In the past, I've been an advocate of the SpyBot and Ad-Aware SE combo, but the new Giant/MS Anti-Spyware solution has done an impressive job for me so far. Just last night, I had a PC that both SpyBot 1.4 beta (w/latest update sigs) and Ad-Aware SE with latest update sigs. reported completely clean of spyware problems. Despite that, ads were randomly popping open in IE windows every 15 seconds or so. MS Anti-Spyware completely cleaned it up.
Believe it or not the makers of the LOP provide their own removal tool.
http://lop.com/new_uninstall.exe
Checked it out - Antivirus software goes insane: It detects 2 trojans within the exe. Both newer versions of lop...
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
It might not be the best anti-spyware program, but its other features are nice. I run Spybot, Ad-aware and SpywareBlaster and decided to install the MS program as well. It didn't find anything, I didn't think it would with the combined efforts of the other 3 programs, but I was impressed by the consolidation of information it presents. In one place I can see the current running processes, startup applications, LSPs and installed activeX apps. It will make troubleshooting family members computer problems easier once they install this. I can just direct them to one app to answer most all my questions, instead of having them dig through the registry, downloading other obscure programs and goggling every unknown process they currently have running. I will still install the other 3 apps on the computers I am called upon to troubleshot and will definitely add this program as well for ease of information.
If you have automatic updates on, this anti-spyware software is automatically downloaded to your system. It happened to all of the Windows XP systems I maintain at work. When 90% of computers run your company's operating system, there's a difference between giving software away and actually pushing it out to people.
What have you been smoking? No, the AntiSpyware beta is NOT being pushed via Windows update; it not available via Automatic Updates or via SUS.
Do you mean the 'Malicious Software Removal Tool' (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=890830), maybe? This is going out via Automatic Updates, but of course it's a different thing completely, and a sign you should RTFA/RTFM.