Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 17th Oct 2009 12:45 UTC
Windows A little over two weeks ago, Microsoft released Microsoft Security Essentials, a security software suite protecting users of Windows against malware and viruses. The company has released data about the number of downloads and fixed infections, and the results are encouraging.
Permalink for comment 389837
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
encouraging?
by l3v1 on Sat 17th Oct 2009 18:30 UTC
l3v1
Member since:
2005-07-06

MSE made almost four million detections on a total of 535752 unique machines, so it seems like it is doing its job.


Not true. That means exactly nothing. Throwing numbers around in a case like this proves exactly nothing. Unless you have the real number of infections and threats. The number of detections means exactly just that: the number of detections. There's no way of knowing whether those machine got infected another four million times over which were not detected. A number of detections in itself doesn't prove of disprove the goodness of MSE.

That said, I don't know or care how good or bad MSE is. Still, those numbers are not enough to prove anything.