Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft has been slowly releasing a minor update to Microsoft AntiSpyware, one that also moves the beta expiration date from July 31 to December 31.
The new version is 1.0.613, Mary says the current version is 1.0.509, and I have 1.0.501. A full Beta 2 should come later this year. All users should get 1.0.6xx “in the next day or so”, according to Microsoft’s Paul Bryan.
I’m probably not the best person to be testing this, since I protect myself pretty well already. AntiSpyware caught 3 spyware products on my system back in February, when I installed it, and just one since, two days ago. I’m going to run a full system scan with Spybot and Ad-Aware to see if it has missed anything.
UPDATE: Ad-Aware SE 1.06R1 found registry keys left behind by EzuLa, which inserts ad links into webpages. It also reported AntiSpyware’s locking of Internet Explorer’s homepage and settings (to prevent tampering by spyware) as an intrusion. So, not only did Ad-Aware find no spyware AntiSpyware missed, just some abandoned registry files, it was actually about to open my IE settings to malicious programs. That’s not just a false positive, its dangerous.
UPDATE: Spybot found nothing. I installed Microsoft AntiSpyware exactly 175 days ago, and its active protection must have worked just fine. My system has been completely clean for all this time. Microsoft AntiSpyware is winning at this game, at least on my system.
Links: Mary Jo Foley
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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