Reply #6: It's a philosophy thing ... [View All]

I won't give the wolf the keys to the hen house.

Consider this. When you install a fresh copy of Windoze, the first time you connect to the Internet, assuming you use Internet Explorer to do so, you're directed to one of Microsoft's own websites that immediately installs a tracking cookie, i.e spyware. Does MS anti-spyware utility detect this? No, nor will it unless MS replaces that cookie with one that does the same thing but goes by a different name. The company's cross-marketing strategy will not allow any other course. They could even change the cookie frequently, updating the detection rules at a pace just behind the rate that they change the cookie, keeping it continually in effect.

Overall, I refuse to cater to their desire to kill the OpenSource/Freeware movement by using Johnny-come-lately products they develop just for this purpose. This is and always has been their tactic for dealing with competitors. If something better comes along, they either buy it or kill it. Since they cannot buy OpenSource, they're trying to kill it by creating a sub-standard piece of software that pretends to do the same thing. And, their anti-spyware product seems custom built to help them do this with even more subversive methods. I ran it once. One of the things it detected was in fact a .dll associated with an OpenSource program I run that most certainly is not spyware.

Either its detection rules are faulty, or the program is set up to do this deliberately. Perhaps both elements are in play.