Perhaps because it is a BETA???
Betas from MS have usually always had a time limit. If you want to run it
longer change your clock. That's how the swedes fixed their Y2K problem
with their nuclear reactors!
Hmmm... I doubt this will work: the antispyware tool
needs to communicate with the SpyNet network to get
updates, or to send contributions. If you change your
clock, it won't change the clock at the SpyNet center; so
youy won't get new updates. In addition, one of the first
thing that MS AS communicates to SpyNet is a product
licence ID and it uses several security keys. It's so
easy then, for SpyNet, to reject all requests coming from
a Beta version that has a known, fixed, peremption date.
Try it if you want, but after a few weeks or a couple of
months, you will be targetted by new sorts of spywares
you still don't know about, and there will be no update
available to you if you run an expired software.
It's like if you wanted to run an antivirus 1 year after
your licence has expired: you won't get any update, and
you will certainly finish with lots of viral infections.
From what I have read (on the Giant website), the MS AS
product should become free, and integrated with an
additional icon within the new "Security Center" that was
shipped with Windows XP SP2.
What is really a shame is that Microsoft has stopped
supporting Windows 98 users (I know a lot of people
around me, and many Cybercafes that are installed with
PCs running Windows 98 behind a switch, a firewall like a
Zywall, and a fast DSL connection: almost all are
infected by spywares or virus, because the installed
antivirus has an expired licence that does not allow
updates...)
Spywares and virus are extremely correlated. Most often
these (badly written) spywares are full of security holes
that are now exploited by virus writers, simply because
these spywares leave too many backdoors open to allow
updating their own engine (when antispywares become aware
of their existence and limit their action).
There are many cases where spywares were installed using
a security hole or backdoor installed in virus, or the
reverse. Even if those are written by independant people
with independant needs, it is a fact that these two are
equally dangerous, and cause as much damages to your
system (in terms of performance or simply because they
can make your applications fail without reason, or steal
some bandwidth or precious diskspace, or they steal very
personnal data). There's large evidence of complicity
between spyware-writers, spamware-writers, worm-writers,
and virus-writers.
Note that I won't trust Microsoft alone even if the GIANT
technology has proven to be useful. Now that it's a
Microsoft product, it will obey to Microsoft's own
strategy: for exmaple, Microsoft is currently cleaning
the GIANT database to remove most detections about
tracking cookies. There are commercial agreements between
Microsoft and, for example: DoubleClick, Google,
Yahoo, ...
Even Microsoft has its own spywares in its own OS: the
Customer Licensing Form tool that runs each time you
logon in your Windows XP should not be there once you
have registered and validated your licence. But it comes
back each time you perform a Windows Update...
Microsoft highly support cookies, because it says
they "enhance your browsing experience". The very bad
thing about cookies is that Microsoft accepts any cookies
that have a too long expiration date. For enahncing a
user's browsing experience, there's no need to keep a
cookie for more time than 1 day: why accepting cookies up
to year 2038? Why Internet Explorer does not support a
mode where cookies would only survice the time when IE is
running? Why IE does need to store them on disk? Why is
there no mode for automatic cleanup of cookies when IE is
closed?
Users want more controls on those cookies. P3P is not
enough (additionally, IE does not respect the contract
about cookies: they are kept and sent even after the time
they should have expired!)
Microsoft also doesnot display ALL files that are stored
in the Internet Temporary Files cache: try with the GUI
to delete all files and all cookies. Then open a Command
window and perform from your user's directory these
commands:
CD "Local Settings"
ATTRIB -R -H -S *.* /a /s
DIR
You'll see several directories that were previously
hidden. And whose contents were not emptied.
Additionally you'll see that the "index.dat" file (that
can't be removed) can grow over time to giant sizes
(several megabytes).
The solution is to logoff and use another administrator
account, and to visit the other users account to DELETE
completely their "Temporary Internet Files" directories
(including the "index.dat" file stored in their root).
Not only IE will restart much faster (but note that
the "Temporary Internet Files" directory, the "index.dat"
and 4 hidden directories will be recreated immediately
when the user logs on), but you'll save precious disk
space, and save disk fragmentation.
I really suspect that "index.dat" contains sensitive
(unerased) personnal data about the URLs you have
visited. When you clear your cache, "index.dat" is NOT
cleared, and still contains traces of all files that were
stored in the cache: their name, URL, and date of visit...
