Friday, January 07, 2005

We're Not Spyware Experts, But . . .

Avid as we are to protect our home computer against clandestine inspection by agents of darkness, who are known to stay awake at night thinking up ways to gain illicit access to the rough drafts of our posts, we were naturally pleased when Microsoft offered up its anti-spyware software in beta.

Of course, the term "spyware" means different things to different people, so we took a close look at Microsoft's thoughts on the issue. They were highly illuminating. Among the perils posed by life on the internet, apparently, would be programs that have the ability to change your Web browser's home page or search page.

We certainly hate when that happens, and so we plunged ahead and downloaded Microsoft's product, gleeful at the knowledge that never again would some rogue piece of software hijack our browser's home page.

Just about the first thing Microsoft's program did, before we even got to running a scan, was to reset IE's home page to msn.com. We felt more secure at once.

Update 1/13/05: So did Walter Mossberg (via TVC Alert).

1 Comments:

Anonymous writes ...

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"Just about the first thing Microsoft's program did, before we even got to running a scan, was to reset IE's home page to msn.com. We felt more secure at once."
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That to me says that it is malware which is loosley defined as: "(MALicious softWARE) Software designed to destroy, aggravate wreak havoc, hide potentially incrimination information, and/or disrupt and damage computer systems." There are plenty of good Malware removal tools available today on the net.

7:45 AM  

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