omar posted about a very cool app in beta by microsoft (via the GIANT acquisition) for combatting spyware.

as someone who’s reasonably savvy when it comes to keeping ie from accepting stuff it shouldn’t, i didn’t expect it to find anything. previous, even somewhat recent, runs of lavasoft’s ad-aware had only turned up doubleclick cookies and a few smaller names in the same type of business; hardly suprising. “microsoft windows antispyware”, frighteningly enough, found “myway” on my machine. note that the bho wasn’t active nor was i able to find any open handles or fingerprints anywhere indicating that it was actually a problem for me.

a few complaints, though. the ui is completely distinct from any other windows app i use. the main window is modeless but minimizes a ‘tree’ off to an unobtrusive tab on the left. note that i actually like the ui, just didn’t adjust quickly. i’m sure this is a remnant of it being an a completely different dev team.

overall, it looks to be a pretty comprehensive set of checkpoints with a pretty decent user-facing bit.