Microsoft AntiSpyware

Not very often does a piece of software come along that blows me out of the water. A few months ago I got a very real experience dealing with spyware. Even after coaching my sister through fixing her computer, on my visit home over thanksgiving I found that all the spyware she had was still installed. When I looked in Add/Remove I was horrified at the number of strange entries in there. My attepmpts to remove them were difficult as well as the uninstallers for these products did such things as:

"Are you sure you don't want to not uninstall this program as it does x y or z for you"? [Yes] [No]

Basically they tricked you into not uninstalling the software by confusing the heck out of you with double and tripple negatives and the like. Eventually I got rid of all of it, and my sister now runs AdAware every few days, but it appears that she still has SpyWare issues every so often.

With my parents it was a lot easier. They had a 3 year old Compaq PC that was falling apart, and so we got them a new Dell that is super sweet. On this machine I made everyone a Limited User, except for my father's account since I've found that some programs just don't install correctly when you try (even though I try and authenticate during the install by running them with admin permissions). Anyway, on their machine, spyware will find a harder time making it's way there since my Mom can't be tricked into downloading something that is not good for her.

But I was still left uneasy knowing this could happen again. Well a few weeks ago I started beta testing the GIANT AntiSpyware software. I admit, my expectations were low having used some of the other stuff our there. However, I was BLOWN away by how nice a piece of software this is. Not only does it protect you from AntiSypware but it tells me what the heck is going on with my computer. I love knowing when applications are adding themselves to the Startup process, adding Contextual menus, modifying x, y or z. It just leaves me feeling like I'm in control of my PC when installing programs.

It doesn't stop there. My Dad installed the software and called me up telling me how much he loved it! I really hope this gives assurance to all those people out there that have been burned by SpyWare to not be affraid of their computers any more (or screwing them up). I'm really proud and happy that Microsoft is providing good tools to protect our users.

Download it now.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 08, 2005
  I tried this program and it found 5 programs that Norton missed, Ihave the AntiVirus protection, and Norton Internet Security
  
  
• Anonymous
  January 08, 2005
  Indeed, it looked well polished. Some minor nags about the beta that I quickly found was the non-working feedback/report function and the fact that it found Labtec keyboards kbhook driver to be critical key logger spyware. I think it should check the files md5 or something and compare it to authentic file.
  
  BTW something very interesting happened when I went to read some news from forbes.com, their ActiveX auto installed with no popups etc (this is xp sp2), and was invisible from any place in IE settings I looked at. Antispyware however allowed me to block it, nice.
• Anonymous
  January 09, 2005
  Get them a mac.
  Come by my office, I'll show you the one I use to "innovate" ;)
• Anonymous
  January 09, 2005
  I did 2 incredible i just unistalled adaware. Just because it found about 100 more adware than adAware found.
  
  Truly Thank Microsoft for another hit!
• Anonymous
  January 09, 2005
  Norton doesn't look for the same things that anti-spyware applications look for. At least it doesn't look for it as well as dedicated software does.
  
  I downloaded and installed MS/Giant AntiSpyware yesterday and I was also blown away by how good it is. In addition to catching a major exploit on my machine that SpySweeper missed, I love that it lets me selectively review and deactivate BHOs and ActiveX things that I could never figure out how to get to. It feels complete, it's geeky without speaking geek, and I wish MS would just roll this into Windows instead of selling it as stand-alone software. Not because I don't want to pay for it, but I think something like this should be on every Windows machine by default so Mom, Pop & Grandma are protected without having to know how to buy and update something extra.
  
  There was something warm and fuzzy about sitting down at my computer this morning to a screen that showed how it took 20 minutes to scan my computer at 2 am and found no threat whatsoever. :-)
• Anonymous
  June 16, 2009
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