Am I being ignorant here, or just naïve, or both? It appears to me that there is a fundamental aspect of MSE missing, yet it is active in almost all other security software. If it can be included in Avast, for example, which is given away free, why can it not be added to MSE? Heuristics technology cannot be so particular to one software company that it cannot be included in others'. This is where my apparent ignorance shows itself; is it not a simple matter to improve MSE? Let's face it, they can afford to.
My understanding is MSE does use Heuristics.
The MSE GUI interface is very simple and does not include any options for controlling Heuristics.
You can Google for MSE Heuristics and find a lot of articles for this.
Here is one article that might help:
Heuristic analysis - Microsoft Community
I think it's up to each user to decide what works best for them, and how much control they want.
I don't think most everyday "Non Tech" users would know what Heuristics are, and might only get confused if they looked at a window allowing them to configure it...
Last edited by DavidE; 19 Oct 2013 at 09:17. Reason: fix typo
I'm sorry, my statement was ambiguous: I know MSE uses Heuristics but the prevalent criticism is that it is inadequate, hence my suggestion if everyone else can do it why not MS. This brings us back to that statement allegedly made by Holly Stewart that suggested MS were leaving it up to 3rd parties to bridge the gap. Again, in my ignorance, I'm beginning to believe that may be true after reading the criticisms in this thread. I just can't believe such an approach would be sensible.
Even with all of my criticism of MSE's poor level of heuristics, I still install it for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is: MSE gets along with other software. If you glance at the BSOD threads from time to time, you will see posts like this one. And there are several reports of problems with the latest version of AVAST.
MSE is safe/conservative/lightweight at the expense of not catching some things that other av tools do.
If MSE had more aggressive heuristic rules and/or if MSE added a lot more of these rules, then MSE might slow a computer down more than it already does (which is not much). Or it might cause other programs to barf. Creating a balanced antivirus product is complicated.
For those that care, MSE still has not processed the ransomware submission that I made two days ago. That said, MS might place submissions without an e-mail address at the bottom of the pile.
Last edited by UsernameIssues; 19 Oct 2013 at 20:51.
That is something I had considered; MSE feels light on its feet and I find that rather reassuring. I've certainly never had any conflicts, in fact I sometimes have to go and look to see if its still there. KAS13 was extremely obtrusive although my latest computer was able to deal with it apart from two or three features (I forget which) that I had to disable.
It's all quite logical, isn't it?
Feels like sloppy business practice, doesn't it?
My reply ... I don't and won't do online banking. Pretty simple for me, but those who feel they're protected will certainly (can) disagree with me.
Where did that come from?
But since you brought it up, you might as well not bank at all and pay cash for everything. Credit/debit card transactions are transmitted over the internet, going through several parties; even checks eventually get a ride over the internet. Your financial data can be accessed from the internet whether you use it or not. If you do use online banking, at least you can check your accounts frequently, making it easier to catch irregularities quickly. That saved my bacon once when my credit card was compromised by a hack-in of a credit card clearing agency and I caught it the next day.
As long as the connection is https, your bank doesn't use Java based software (I'm amazed that some still do), you use a good password, your bank uses two factor authorization, you have a good two way firewall in place, and you bank only when on a secure connection (not a public one), online banking is actually safer than using credit/debit cards.
Last edited by Lady Fitzgerald; 22 Oct 2013 at 01:28. Reason: Oldtimer's Disease - That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
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