ET call home - Please Do Not. Vista News Discuss ET call home - Please Do Not. in the Windows Vista forums; Prevent Malicious Software Removal Tool from phoning home. The only way to turn off this option is to create a new Registry key. Open your Registry first, click on Start, ...

[Snuffy]

Prevent Malicious Software Removal Tool from phoning home.

The only way to turn off this option is to create a new Registry key. Open your Registry first, click on Start, Run and type registry in the box. Hit enter and the Registry should appear. Now navigate to the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\MRT and check if it contains a Dword named DontReportInfectionInformation.

If this is not the case you can add it. Right-click the right pane and select New > Dword from the menu. Enter the string DontReportInfectionInformation as the name of the Dword. Double-click it afterwards and set the value of it to 1.

[Znod]

Is there some reason to be concerned about this program calling home versus the multitude of other MS programs that do so too.

[Snuffy]

The fact is that it sends ( my understanding) a list of every thing you have on C: all programs. since I can not find the log, I'm not positive, and the others are not 100% sure.

[Znod]

Thanks Snuffster.

[felix8406]

But if the tool doesn't report back to its data base, how will it determine that a certain file is indeed malware? As I understand it, as opposed to most anti-virus or adware removal tools, it does not stored its data base on the PC, so when it scans a PC, it compares its data base stored on a network to the PC that's being scanned. If it's not allowed to do that, it'll never know whether or not a PC has malware.

Another thing is that if it in fact sends everything a PC has, it would take MS a huge storage space to acomodate all information from every PC where the info has been collected, not to mention the manpower to go through every file that's being collected. Of course, that's my take as I've never seen a log or know exactly how or what info is collected.

[Znod]

All true, me thinks. But, I don't use Defender. I turn it off, but I think Snuffy is saying that it still calls home. I am not sure I guess whether turning it off keeps it from calling home.

[felix8406]

I don't use Defender either, though I think Defender, as opposed to the Malicious Software Removal Tool, stores the info on your PC. And yes, I agree with Snuffy, the Malicious Software Removal Tool does report back to MS, but (in my opinion) it must in order to compare the software that's on a PC to its data base. If a "malicious" file matches one from the server, it'll warm the user about the infected file. If it's not allowed to report back, it'll never know whether or not the PC is infected.