I often check my list of processes in Task Manager, especially when my work machine seems to be crawling a bit, and when I saw the following task I was fairly certain it was some type of Spyware or virus - the name just sounds like something that you'd choose if you were trying a little bit TOO hard to make your executeable sound legit:
However, this is the name of the main exe for the MS AntiSpyware product. Interesting choice I thought, are Microsoft starting to admit and embrace their reputation surrounding bloatware?
The product in general seems to be pretty good though. It has some nice options, especially around things like exclusions, and it seems to be able to clean and trap most things. It's quite nice that it's an active process, compared to products such as SpyBot Search and Destroy and LavaSoft's AdAware which offer to attempt to clean up your PC after you've already been infected. Still, it's a shame to have to run one of these things at all - and at home, I don't. I only need to run this sort of crap at work as I'm forced to occasionally use Internet Explorer, and because I don't trust a large percentage of other machines on the network. It's somehow both sad and amusing when your home network environment is more secure, and performs a lot faster than your corporate one.