MS Spyware Beta never finds spyware

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
  • Start date Start date
J

John

I have been running MS Spyware Beta with almost daily
updates for about 2 weeks. It never finds any spyware.
An hour later I run Counterspy and it always detects
spyware and yesterday discovered that PC-Watch had
somehow been installed on my system. What's up?
 
Mine also. The first time I ran it about a month ago, It
found 5 items. Nothing since. When I run AdAware it
almost always finds data miners.....
 
Try running a full system scan at least two times in Safe Mode. On the Scan
Page, choose Scan Options > Full System Scan.
 
Hi Frank,

The problems there is that Data Miners are tracking
cookies,These are not included in Microsofts Antispy,
I agree they should address this issue as It doesnt help
for Viruses or Trojans and doesnt seem to be doing to
well on Spyware looking at these support boards so if
they want to make it more appealing to Users they maybe
should either update there definitions for the spyware
and do a automatic boot into safe mode if its required to
remove the spyware or start including cookies into there
files to make it stand out from the other freeware
available.


A example of a tracking cookie that adaware will find is
like this:

obj[1]=IECache Entry : Cookie:[email protected]/

Cookies are very small text files (usually around 50 to
150 bytes and always less than 4kb) downloaded from a Web
site by your browser. Some stay in your Random Access
Memory and are deleted when you close your browser.
Others are saved to your hard drive when you close your
browser. They are used by Web site owners to remember
your preferences and by advertisers to track your online
habits, and target ads according to your interests. The
use of the term "your" is a little misleading. It's not
really "your" visits that are recorded, but "someone's."
Cookies do not identify you, but they can keep track of
your movements from page to page on a site.

Cookies can't get information from your hard drive. They
are not programs, just strings of letters and numbers.


You can change your cookie settings easy enough if you
want to block Tracking cookies,

Go to Start>Control Panel>Internet Options >Then the
Privacy Tab and change the settings from there or even
click the advanced button and choose to prompt for first
party cookies and third party cookies,at least this way
you will be aware which ones are placed on your pc

Regards Andy
 
As far as I know, what Ad-Aware calls "Data miners" are
just cookies, something which:

a) Microsoft AntiSpyware does not yet scan for
b) in my view are not true spyware anyway and pose no
threat
 
I installed it the day that it came out. This program
has NEVER found spyware on my machine. Ad-aware and
yahoo toolbar find items, not MS Beta...any thoughts or
ideas?
 
MS AS Beta 1.0.509 does not scan for Data miners or cookies as of yet. I
can't say what is going on for John the first poster. But as for Frank and
Richard, Adaware and others like Yahoo toolbar are most likely showing
results that are mainly cookies and data miners, which again are not scanned
for by MS AS 1.0 beta right now. And as for Frank, after you clean the
system, MS AS 1.0 Beta does real time spyware protection and your PC
shouldn't be getting re-infected as long as MS AS has definitions for any
new attacks. So if you do daily scanning as I do, then the results should be
zero basically all the time after your first scan/cleaning.
 
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