MS AntiSpyware vs Ad-Aware vs. SpyBot

An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta.net compares Microsoft's new spyware fighting tool, Windows AntiSpyware, to Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D; the two leading spyware tools on the market today. The review sets up an infected PC using VMWare Workstation and scans the machine using all three tools to see which tool detects the most spyware. Though still in beta, Microsoft AntiSpyware does an amazing job at detecting spyware by finding twice as many infected files as Ad-Aware and nearly three times as SpyBot."

Wow, is this for real

[Cracell]

So wait a sec Microsoft's product is actual good?

But MS Anti Spyware doesn't detect itself.

[hawks5999]

The new spynet feature is pretty blatantly spyware itself.

Wait a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait.. aren't we supposed to hate Microsoft? I'm confused.

Funny...

[lga]

Does anyone else think it funny that the advert at the bottom of this review is for Smiley Central, a well known piece of computer-invading crap?

Re:Wow, is this for real

[harrkev]

They have only owned it for a few weeks. Even Microsoft has limits on how fast they can screw stuff up.

Re:Wow, is this for real

[stfvon007]

What there gonna do is make it good so it becomes what 95% of users use, Then start mostly ignoreing it cause they have a monopoly, just like what happened to Internet Exploder. It will also be bundled with Windows XP SP3 and Longhorn.

Re:Wow, is this for real

[wankledot]

Of course it's good, they know where to find spyware and viruses because they're the ones that created them!!@# [/tinfoilhat]

Too many hits

[tehshen]

There is a problem with the database that is preventing the site from working.
An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.

They're letting us slashdot their mail server too?

It is good!

[Further82]

It even detected and removed Firefox and my Linux partition. Ad-aware missed those.

Re:and Linsux is really Unix, so?

[l3v1]

step MS has taken in order to help the common user avert infection by malicious developers
conspiracy to degrade MS software

Good heavens :) Medicine has evolved pretty much in the last couple of hundred years you know, so you can easily get pills for your delusions :)

Well, the ignorance part is harder to cure, 'cause it's more up to you then doctors.

It caught itself trying to make changes

[srNeu]

I just ran it and got a message:

The Internet Explorer URL for your Search Assistant is attempting to be changed from http://www.google.com/ie to http://ie.search.msn.com/{SUB_RFC1766}/srchasst/sr chcust.htm.

So this is how they are going to promote their new search engine.

Re:Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're obviously context sensitive. ;)

Priceless

[lxs]

This is the first alert I got after running it:

Microsoft AntiSpyware has detected that the Window's Messenger Service is currently running. The messenger service is sometimes used in corporate networks to send information from the administrator to its users. However, this service has been a wide source for pop-up message spam, and for most users not on a corporate network should be turned off and disabled.

They even detect their own crap!

Re:Twice as much

[karmaflux]

With that much crap cloggin up your resources, spyware doesn't have a chance! It'll never find processor time! Clever ruse.

Re:Missing Information

[jaylee7877]

good point. I ran the MS beta on my desktop. It detected a win32 port of gnu cat (cat.exe) as "Norwegian Porn Dialer". Don't recall seeing that option added...

Re:Not a Microsoft Designed Product

[Jesus 2.0]

I rennamed a textfile something like claria.exe and that thing started screaming immediately that bad people were trying to take over my life.

Wow, how horrible. I can't imagine how annoying and dangerous that would be for me, given how often I rename text files to claria.exe.

Re:For fairness...

[Jesus 2.0]

Except Lindsay Lohan.

Re:For fairness...

[Ark42]

Where those 4000+ files in the spybot/adaware quarantine directories?

Even better

[PortWineBoy]

I got an ad saying my computer may be infected with spyware...but then it switched to some girl in panties so all was okay.

Crutch?

[Anonymous Coward]

christ on a crutch

Funny, I always thought Christ was a crutch.

arghhh

[TCP Pimp]

Yeah works great, I ran it on a client's PC and it uninstalled Windows. :)

Re:Not a Microsoft Designed Product

[ameoba]

OTOH, I learned the hard way not to trust file names. A routing cleaning of core dumps on our fileserver at school managed to destroy the work of half of the VLSI class. Who would've thought that students would be designing CPU cores and just call the output file "core"...

Subscription fee?!

[Beetle B.]

"Ad-Aware and SpyBot offer great performance for free, yet when Microsoft debuts its AntiSpyware application, it will require a subscription fee."

A subscription fee?! First, they produce an OS that's just open to all manner of spyware one can imagine, then they actually charge to have it removed?!

Wow! I need to get into this business!