Only days after a 10,137 page petition was sent to Microsoft’s Antispyware department, containing over 400,000 signatures from Messenger Plus! fans around the globe, Microsoft has released updated detection signatures for it’s Antispyware product which no longer detect Messenger Plus! as a run-time threat anymore.
A little over a month ago, Microsoft Antispyware began detecting Messenger Plus! as a spyware application. For those who do not know, when installing Messenger Plus!, you’re given the option of installing a sponsor package. If you chose not to, there is nothing from the sponsor installed on your computer. MSAS (Microsoft Antispyware) detected “msgplus.exe”, the core of Messenger Plus! as a spyware application – though the file is the same whether or not you install the sponsor or not and doesn’t contain any spyware at all. Many users believed, along with Patchou (The author of Messenger Plus!) that it was wrong to accuse Messenger Plus! of being a spyware application and automatically blocking it from being ran – even when the sponsor wasn’t installed!
Patchou became frustrated, feeling that Plus! was unfairly targeted and various emails to the MSAS team did not yield any answers or the results he wanted – they denied it. He left, quite possibly what was the future of Messenger Plus!, in the hands of it’s fans: an online petition which would be printed and sent to Microsoft as the last stand between the little software developer and the major software giant.
Now, Messenger Plus! isn’t any small program – it’s installed by thousands of users every day and used by millions around the globe to enhance the functionality of MSN Messenger. It came as no surprise as we watched the signature count for the petition climb every day, that the petition ended up with over 400,000 signatures a month on from it’s creation. Surely Microsoft would have to do something seeing the popularity of Plus! and the potential harm that this petition could have done to their Antispyware product.
Now, even though Cyril hasn’t received any official word from Microsoft, and the petition probably hasn’t been received yet, as noted, the updated signatures (dated 23rd September 2005) no longer detect Messenger Plus! as a run-time threat. The little software developer took on the software giant, and through the support of his user base, Microsoft has listened.
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