Microsoft software to remove spyware
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WASHINGTON - Microsoft Corp. disclosed plans Thursday to offer frustrated users of its Windows software new tools within 30 days to remove spyware programs secretly running on computers.
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The Federal Trade Commission won an important victory last week in its fight to protect consumers from spyware, the software that tracks unsuspecting Web surfers, bombards them with advertisements and sometimes even steal login information and passwords.
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The Federal Trade Commission is going after spyware, bits of computer code that install themselves on the computers of Internet users to track or disrupt their online activities.
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With the ink barely dry on Microsoft&#39;s acquisition of anti-spyware vendor Giant Company Software, questions have arisen about the ownership of the anti-spyware code Microsoft bought.
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SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 15 -- Stepping up its fight against computer threats at the risk of alienating security businesses, Microsoft Corp. announced Tuesday it will give away a program to combat privacy-stealing and PC-clogging spyware and other virtual pests.
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Is Microsoft's anti-malware giveaway part of a master plan to flush out software pirates?
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Microsoft today announced that it will buy Giant Company Software, a developer of anti-spyware and Internet security offerings. The Redmond, Washington, firm will use technology from the acquisition
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A software patch to protect your system is available from Microsoft.
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The top anti-spyware products are reviewed at Adware Report. In-depth, side-by-side comparisons of popular spyware removal applications help you find the software that&#39;s right for you.
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The free service pack is a major overhaul aimed at defeating a wide variety of security weaknesses that hackers have exploited. Microsoft says the easiest way to obtain
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Stepping up its fight against computer threats at the risk of alienating security businesses, Microsoft Corp. announced Tuesday it will give away a program to combat privacy-stealing and PC-clogging spyware and other virtual pests.
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The computer maker and a nonprofit organization have launched a project to teach people about spyware and how to avoid it. By Thomas Claburn.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft forced a popular alternative to Windows Update off the Internet today, sending the maker of AutoPatcher cease-and-desist e-mail. The free utility has been removed from its download site. Microsoft did not give a reason for the move, which came more than four years after AutoPatcher debuted. "Today we received an e-mail from Microsoft requesting the immediate take-down of the download page, which of course means that AutoPatcher is probably history," said Antonis Kaladis, the 20-year-old Greek college student and author of the program. "As much as we disagree, we can do very little, and although the download page is merely a collection of mirrors, we took the download page down." AutoPatcher, which was in version 5.6, let users collect Windows hotfixes and security patches from Microsoft's update services, then package them so they could be applied to multiple machines, or reused multiple times on a single PC. It was especially popular among people who frequently reformatted drives or those who did informal tech support for friends and family or in a small business. Each month, the current set of Windows' -- and as of this month, Office's as well -- updates and hotfixes would be added to the packages. The program supported Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Server 2003. This month, Kaladis and his team of volunteers added support for Office XP 2003 and 2007. The Microsoft take-down e-mail was posted to the Neowin.net forum that AutoPatcher used for its user support. "Microsoft has received information that the domain listed above [www.autopatcher.com/downloads/], which appears to be on servers under your control, is offering unlicensed copies of, or is engaged in other unauthorized activities relating to copyrighted works published by Microsoft," the e-mail read. "We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the material described above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of this software via your company's network," it continued after listing various versions of Windows and Office. The e-mail was signed by a Peter Anaman, a Microsoft Internet investigator. Users of AutoPatcher were, not surprisingly, hot. "I cannot believe that Microsoft did this," Andrew Lucas said in a response to Kaladis' posting of the news. "You are providing a service Microsoft refuses to do. It has now been over 3 years since Microsoft released SP2 for XP." "The end of AutoPatcher is the end of my use of any Windows product, period," swore a user identified only as KMan. Other users -- lots of others -- literally swore at Microsoft in the comments attached to Kaladis' post or on the Neowin forum. More than a few however, took a more c'est la guerre approach to AutoPatcher's demise. "I don't get why everyone is so annoyed, I'm shocked AutoPatcher was allowed to continue for so long in the first place. Is anyone really surprised by this?" asked a user calling himself kudos in a post to Neowin. Microsoft has dealt similar cease-and-desist orders to other patch-related Web sites or services in the past. In April, it leaned on Hotfix.net, whose operator, Ethan Allen, had posted more than 100 hotfixes he expected would be part of Vista SP1. Coincidentally, Vista SP1 was talked up by Microsoft today. Allen also complied by yanking the download. Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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EarthLink, which was the first ISP to provide free anti-spyware tools for its members, has updated its anti-spyware offering with an enhancement that provides real-time software scanning
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Download the latest version of Ad-Aware, the popular spyware killer utility. New features include a improved  interface; some versions have rootkit and malware removal tools.
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Microsoft today announced that it has acquired Giant Software, a provider of anti-spyware and Internet security products. Microsoft said it will use intellectual property and technology assets from the.
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With concerns about spyware rapidly mounting, Blue Coat Systems is introducing a proxy appliance to combat the problem.