A new feature planned to debut with the release Candidate (RC) of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in early 2011 got me thinking that Windows 8 could use something similar.
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced Tracking Protection for IE9 RC, a new opt-in mechanism designed to identify and block undesired tracking while navigating the web.
The mechanism is based on ’Tracking Protection Lists’ which need to be implemented individually by users in order to block or allow specific websites to track their behavior online and harvest data from them.
Now obviously, since this feature is in IE, it will also be in future versions of Windows, so it’s not really my concern.
However, a similar concept should be applied to applications. It would be a great move from Microsoft to add blacklisting and whitelisting capabilities to Windows 8, as far as applications that get to run on top of the operating system are concerned.
The software giant is already providing Application Compatibility Updates, refreshes that can block incompatible apps from running on Windows altogether.
But at the same time, app blacklisting in Windows 8 doesn’t necessarily need to be about incompatible programs.
Instead, icould be ut sed to tackle a major threat that customers are facing today, rogue code, also known as scareware.
Microsoft, or certain trusted third-parties such as antivirus vendors could supply users with lists of blacklisted application which can be integrated into Windows 8, preventing the installation of rogue applications, independent of whether a security solution is present on the computer or not.
Given that fake antivirus, rogue defragmenters , etc. are considered malicious code, there shouldn’t be any real problem from putting together lists with the scareware that users should stay away from, and keeping it up to date through RSS, or another update mechanism.
There also the possibility that tools such as Windows Defender or the Malicious Software Removal Tool could leverage such a list to block rogues from installing on a computer, or detecting and preventing them from running until a legitimate AV can be used for their removal.
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