Vampmon
August 15th, 2005, 05:12 AM
The image of Messenger Plus! receives another serious blow today after being red-flagged by Microsoft AntiSpyware. Earlier, the most widespread and also Mess.be-recommended MSN Messenger addon got banned from Download.com because of its optional sponsor program.
According to the free malware scanner currently in BETA, the main executable (msgplus.exe) itself has now become a threat and will be blocked from running. According to some reports, even explicitly allowing the software to launch sometimes fails. The Warning popup was only added in the most recent update of AntiSpyware for it was previously ignored as just a moderate risk.
Like Patchou rightfully puts it: "If they were detecting the setup, I could concede that a threat exists, as the user still has the choice to install the sponsor or not. But they are detecting msgplus.exe which does not harm your computer in any way".
To make things even worse for end-users, those who entrust Microsoft AntiSpyware to "Remove" Messenger Plus! are in fact stuck with the actual sponsor program. Who's causing disaster to your system now? And it's not the first time that Microsoft makes doubtful changes to its spyware definitions.
The software developer has contacted the folks at Microsoft personally so I guess all we can do is ignore the warnings and hope that the threat level will be knocked down again soon. (yn)!
>> Download Messenger Plus!: www.msgplus.net
(NOTE: Installing without the sponsor program highly recommended).
According to the free malware scanner currently in BETA, the main executable (msgplus.exe) itself has now become a threat and will be blocked from running. According to some reports, even explicitly allowing the software to launch sometimes fails. The Warning popup was only added in the most recent update of AntiSpyware for it was previously ignored as just a moderate risk.
Like Patchou rightfully puts it: "If they were detecting the setup, I could concede that a threat exists, as the user still has the choice to install the sponsor or not. But they are detecting msgplus.exe which does not harm your computer in any way".
To make things even worse for end-users, those who entrust Microsoft AntiSpyware to "Remove" Messenger Plus! are in fact stuck with the actual sponsor program. Who's causing disaster to your system now? And it's not the first time that Microsoft makes doubtful changes to its spyware definitions.
The software developer has contacted the folks at Microsoft personally so I guess all we can do is ignore the warnings and hope that the threat level will be knocked down again soon. (yn)!
>> Download Messenger Plus!: www.msgplus.net
(NOTE: Installing without the sponsor program highly recommended).