We have some more good news to share.  As you know, our team is constantly working to evolve the OneCare product and service to ensure you get the most up-to-date features that help protect and maintain your PC.  I am pleased to share that we are releasing new functionality in OneCare to help better protect users from the threat of phishing scams online.

 

Beginning today, OneCare will now assist with the activation of phishing protection with IE7’s Microsoft Phishing Filter.  The filter was designed to help protect customers from the threat of ‘phishing’ – as most of you know by now - a form of online fraud which mimics legitimate, trusted sites in order to trick people into sharing personal or sensitive information which is later sold, or used for ID theft purposes, etc.  Microsoft Phishing Filter helps protect people from sharing personal information with bogus websites by warning customers when a site looks suspicious, and blocks people from unwittingly sharing personal information with known, reported phishing sites. 

 

As you may recall, we mentioned this anti-phishing technology in the blog in August when we introduced OneCare Advisor.  Since then, it has received very positive feedback from users, and we think it’s one of the best phishing filters available.  We have also tried to independently verify our filter’s effectiveness - you can read a recent study by 3Sharpe that highlights our fairly unique approach to anti-phishing protection at: http://www.jeffersonwells.com/client_audit_reports/main.htm. 

 

Now, what do you, as OneCare customers, need to do to make sure you have these phish-fighting capabilities?  Very little.  In keeping with OneCare’s worry-free service, you will automatically receive the IE7 anti-phishing technology.  So if you haven’t already turned it on, when OneCare prompts you to turn on the Microsoft Phishing Filter over the next few days, you can just click yes and you’ll be good to go.  From there, OneCare will help ensure Microsoft Phishing Filter automatically monitors suspicious sites as you’re browsing to help keep you and your family protected against phishing scams.

 

We look forward to your feedback on this update.

 

Best,

 

Yoav

As you may have heard, Microsoft announced some big news today – the Windows Vista has now been released to manufacturing and the general availability date is set for January 30, 2007!  So what does this mean for Windows Live OneCare?  Quite a bit.  The next generation of Windows Live OneCare (v1.5) will launch globally the same day Windows Vista rolls out to the general public.  Because the new version of OneCare was designed with Windows Vista in mind, we think every homeowner and small business owner that purchases Windows Vista for their PC will like OneCare equally as much for its unified antivirus and antispyware filtering capabilities, and more backup options, not to mention the ongoing PC maintenance it provides.

 

If you’re already a OneCare subscriber, we encourage you to check out Windows Vista when it comes out next year, knowing that OneCare will still be there to help you with your PC care needs.  And if you’re one of the lucky few who’s already running the pre-released version of Windows Vista, you can still test v1.5 of Windows Live OneCare by downloading it at http://ideas.live.com/. As the Windows Vista launch date nears, Microsoft will begin providing a special offer to Windows Live OneCare beta testers. We’ll share more details on the special offer soon.

 

All the best,

Gina, Lead Product Manager and OneCare team guest blogger