NZ's PC World magazine is being quoted on WorldNetDaily over a story suggesting Microsoft has been caught updating computers by stealth even when users had specified NO automatic updates.
I wondered about this myself a few weeks ago after discovering an update had taken place that I had not authorised. Wish I had paid more attention to what was played with.
This has been known about in the techie world for some time now - since the automatic updates service continues to run irrespective of your actual setting.
According to Microsoft (at the time I first became aware of it) it was a measure they only used under severe urgency (ie patch this hole or trojan apocalypse breaks out across the world).
If you want to be truly in charge of your windows updates you must disable the automatic updates service along with background intelligent transfer service. Then download the MBSA (Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer). This tool scans your computer and *advises* what updates are missing when compared against the online database. You then can individually view the related patch page and choose to download the individual .exe patch files.
Posted by: Shane Ponting | September 15, 2007 at 06:09 PM
Avoid this intrusion use Linux. have a look at PCLinuxOS; it's free, everything most people need comes with it, all on one disk, and runs well even in 5 yr old computers. My wife and children are using the 2006 version in an even older machine. Don't tolerate the constant security hassles, viruses and the stealthy takeover to control what you are allowed to use your computer for.
Posted by: KevinOB | September 15, 2007 at 08:57 PM
But security hassles, viruses and content control are fun! How boring would it be to have no worries about security, viruses and no cool hacker apps which circumvent Microsoft's latest XYZ drm control system......
Posted by: Shane Ponting | September 16, 2007 at 07:09 AM