[Swordmaker]

At least one "backdoor Trojan," a malicious computer code secretly installed onto PCs, was discovered on 3.5 million computers. That's 62 percent.

So much for that argument...

[apackof2]

People today use whatever IM client their friends are on without regard to its security,"

Is this only an IM concern?

I don't use any IM programs

[Michael Barnes]

MS is teh sux0r

WTF, might as well kick it off early.. ;-)

/suse user
//stalking

[Swordmaker]

It is amazing the degree of ignorance the MSM can demonstrate. I always prefer to go to the actual report. Here is what Microsoft ACTUALLY said:

• Combining the data shown in Figure 1 with that shown in Figure 3 allows us to determine that, in the most recent release of the MSRT (March 2006), the rate of infected computers per executions of the tool was 0.28 percent. In other words, the tool removed malware from approximately one in every 355 computers on which it ran. The average rate across all releases from June 2005 to March 2006 is similar, at 0.32 percent, or approximately one in every 311 computers. This infection rate has remained relatively constant across the measurable releases, with the high being 0.4 percent in August 2005 and the low being 0.24 percent in September 2005.

That would make these articles, and the erroneous interpretation of the statistics, FUD.

[Swordmaker]

Both of the articles I found on the Microsoft report on Malware were mis-understanding the Microsoft report... and the authors assumed the 5.7 million computers were a statistical sample of the total population and based their stories on that mistake. Instead, Microsoft did something unusual... the "sample" is the entire population!

Even more embarassing is the fact that the headline comes from the supposedly pro-PC TechNewsWorld.com. They were ready to believe their headline!

Sometimes perception is more telling than fact.