Microsoft Defender leads the user to assume Free and Open Source Software is malicious with scary red warnings.

Microsoft Defender leads the user to believe Free and Open Source Software is malicious.

Microsoft “Defender”, the questionable “free” antivirus software included with Windows, routinely flags Free and Open Source Software that I try to install as a potential virus.

So far, I’ve gotten warnings like these on LibreOffice installers, as well as PeaZip, HexChat, and QBitTorrent.

In fact, over on Reddit, some people even say Microsoft has been removing BitTorrent programs in general, without asking them first, even when there’s no malware at all in them. In fact, there’s so many complaints of Microsoft doing this, here’s an entire search result. Take your pick.

Windows itself meets the definition of spyware and adware set forth by the overall anti-spyware and anti-adware communities in the late 1990s, when the problem first emerged with the stuff piggybacking on software that claimed to be free of charge.

Windows “11” even had the entire OS crash and freeze on the dev and beta channels recently, because a lookup to a Microsoft ad server from the Start Menu failed to respond.

It’s impossible to turn it all off, and to discourage you from even trying to, Microsoft puts all of the knobs and dials on over a dozen and a half different screens and websites.

Microsoft defends itself and their own monopoly, but that RAT and the cryptojacker that came in on some dodgy software are usually “fine”.

Of course, if Defender was really that good, would there still be an antivirus software industry that seems to be as profitable as ever?

Techrights has been doing a Delete Github campaign. Perhaps someone needs to have a talk with the people who host on Microsoft GitHub and then have their software flagged as a virus by Windows?