Is Microsoft a Home Page Hijacker?
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Preston Gralla
Mar. 02, 2005 03:08 PM
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Overall, Microsoft AntiSpyware, is a very good, solid piece of software. But it has one particularly disturbing feature -- in essence, it hijacks your home page, and so is guilty of doing the very thing it's supposed to be protecting you against. And, as you might guess, it hijacks your home page to -- surprise! -- MSN.com.
How does it do this? In a devilishly simple and exceedingly misleading manner. When it detects that a hijacker is trying to reset your home page, it warns you and then asks whether you want to block the hijacker. When you answer yes, Microsoft AntiSpyware promptly blocks the hijacker. But it then does a hijack of its own and resets your home page to MSN.com.
If you dig deep enough, you can defeat AntiSpyware's home page hijacking. Choose Advanced Tools-->Browser Hijack Restore, and highlight Start Page. Click "Change restore settings to a new URL," type in your normal home page, then click OK. From now on, when Microsoft blocks a home page hijacking, it will let you keep your own home page, and won't do a hijacking on its own.
Microsoft AntiSpyware is still in beta, so let's hope that Microsoft changes this behavior. Apart from this grubby little feature, it's an excellent spyware killer -- one of the best ones out there.
Preston Gralla is the author of Windows Vista in a Nutshell, the Windows Vista Pocket Reference, and is the editor of WindowsDevCenter.com. He is also the author of Internet Annoyances, PC Pest Control, Windows XP Power Hound, and Windows XP Hacks, Second Edition, and co-author of Windows XP Cookbook. He has written more than 30 other books.
What do you think of Microsoft AntiSpyware? Let me know.
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Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.
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Probably unrelated but worth noting
2005-03-03 13:21:09 jc@noirextreme.com [Reply | View]
Redirect to Microsoft's home page in Firefox:
http://www.noirextreme.com/node/65
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NO EXCUSE! QUIT MAKING EXCUSES!
2005-03-03 12:13:50 cecker [Reply | View]
When this beta was released, I had the sense to ignore it. After all, if M$ could develop good software, we wouldn't need to pop the extra cash for spyware and antivirus software, and spend time installing alternate web browser and email clients just so I can be safe from hackers, spyware and virus. This is yet another news item that proves my intelligence. Any change to any setting on my PC should be prefaced with a clear indication of what is going on -- there's absolutely no reason to reset the home page to MSN.com -- the previous setting could just as easily be restored. Quit making excuses for the sorriest excuse of a software developer and start demanding they do one of two things: Either quit illegally monopolizing the market or Quit releasing buggy, sub-standard, insecure software and patches that change my system settings. The more people make excuses for their bravado, the more they'll hold back the development and use of technology in everyday life.
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what else are they going to do?
2005-03-02 15:57:37 notjcs [Reply | View]
sorry, but i can't blame them. your home page has already been changed in this situation, so the program isn't going to know what to set your home page back to.
so what else is it going to do, set it to "about:blank"? many novice users aren't going to know how to change it back to something useful and instead wonder why their browser just brings up a blank page. (msn.com is the default for ie on a new computer, remember)
microsoft is right for setting it back to msn.com. anyone that has a homepage different than that probably knows how to change it back anyway, so i don't see the problem.
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Under the advanced options, there's an option to "restore browser defaults". This will correct any possibly browser hijacking to the original windows defaults. The windows default homepage is, of course, msn.com
To change this there is a button on the right that says "Change my restore default homepage", where you can put your desired default homepage the next time MS Antispyware runs.
Hope that helps!
Oh, and to all the anti-MS haters, perhaps next time you should look at the options that are directly in front of you, or perhaps learn to understand what the programs that you're installing do.