Second instance on the front page today of false positives / false negatives, the other being the walmart shoplifting story.
Edit: possibly also the MLK one and police v journalists one...
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
31–40 of 243 posts
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#32> The digital signature racket > The price range is wide but a certificate only valid for a year will typically go for about $100. This is hypocrisy, smells like Apple-fanboy trolling. MS stimulates competition on the code signing certificates and it is free to deploy through their appstore. And you can bypass Smartscreen right from the warning. Certificates cost $59.00 at codesigncert[0], not "about $100.00". Establ…
$59 if you pay for 3 years, so actually $177 up front or $75 for one year, and again, this doesn't actually help bec after x years your app will need to build a reputation again.
This is ridiculous and as others have said is meant to funnel devs to using the broken Microsoft Store.
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#33> The digital signature racket > The price range is wide but a certificate only valid for a year will typically go for about $100. This is hypocrisy, smells like Apple-fanboy trolling. MS stimulates competition on the code signing certificates and it is free to deploy through their appstore. And you can bypass Smartscreen right from the warning. Certificates cost $59.00 at codesigncert[0], not "about $100.00". Establ…
User are generally not tech savy to bypass Smartscreen warning by themselves.
My point was to compare MS approach to Apple's. Please don't nitpick.
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#34walled gardens ever increasing assault on independent developers never stops. seems microsoft is following Apple's trend of shitting on indies. my take is folks develop your apps to be browser based, if you can. if we can have a browser app, like Figma. a lot of apps, could do. the ones that need to deal with os n files etc, might be non-starter. take your talents to open platforms.
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#35I agree in general with what SmartScreen tries to do. There are a lot of non-technical folks clicking on stuff willy-nilly so adding barriers to prevent spyware / virus infections for totally unknown binaries is a good thing. A "Let's Encrypt" for code signing may be a good idea, but the cost of a certificate is itself a barrier for spyware distributors, so i'm conflicted on that... not sure what the right fix is.
> but the cost of a certificate is itself a barrier for spyware distributors
Is it? If spyware and malware wasn't profitable, people wouldn't take the risks to create and distribute it. An up front cost of a few hundred dollars could be made back with a single successful ransomware attack, and the certificate would last years.
This "smart screen" thing, as well as Google's endless warnings when you try to install an app outside of their store on Android are not for protecting the user; they're there to prevent competition.
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#36walled gardens ever increasing assault on independent developers never stops. seems microsoft is following Apple's trend of shitting on indies. my take is folks develop your apps to be browser based, if you can. if we can have a browser app, like Figma. a lot of apps, could do. the ones that need to deal with os n files etc, might be non-starter. take your talents to open platforms.
Jump into Chrome's walled garden? Ask browser extension devs how it went for them and it'll tell what happens/will happen with web apps.
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
User are generally not tech savy to bypass Smartscreen warning by themselves.
My point was to compare MS approach to Apple's. Please don't nitpick.
How am I nitpicking? I am just highlighting the fact that when I signed my app using Apple provided certs and notarization, there is no additional warning for the user while on MS land unless I get an EV cert I will not be able to remove it.
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#38> The digital signature racket > The price range is wide but a certificate only valid for a year will typically go for about $100. This is hypocrisy, smells like Apple-fanboy trolling. MS stimulates competition on the code signing certificates and it is free to deploy through their appstore. And you can bypass Smartscreen right from the warning. Certificates cost $59.00 at codesigncert[0], not "about $100.00". Establ…
$59 if you pay for 3 years, so actually $177 up front or $75 for one year, and again, this doesn't actually help bec after x years your app will need to build a reputation again. This is ridiculous and as others have said is meant to funnel devs to using the broken Microsoft Store.
This is so true. When you renew, you get back to square one with reputation.
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#39I am guessing that they'd want you do distribute your program through their "App Store" as a UWP, which is likely subject to sandboxing and will never show the SmartScreen prompts. Making raw Win32 .exe distribution as user-unfriendly as possible is very likely to be a goal of MS.
Honestly I am all for sandboxing by default and scary prompts for anything that doesn't subject itself to strict sandboxing or that tries to break out of it. That doesn't mean apps necessarily have to come from a MS curated store either, just that by default the run in a sandboxed context with access to dick squat on my system. I absolutely hate when I install something like Adobe Acrobat and it installs 18 schedule…
> That doesn't mean apps necessarily have to come from a MS curated store either, just that by default the run in a sandboxed context with access to dick squat on my system.
This is absolutely possible. You can distribute your UWP app as an MSIX package[0], which allows side-loading without having to go through the store. The whole experience is actually quite nice and straightforward, UI-wise.
Re: Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting independent developers
#40> “Developers, developers, developers!” was a cry from Steve Ballmer and one of the speeches that defined him as CEO of Microsoft. These infamous words were uttered back in 2006.
The famous YouTube video of it was uploaded in 2006, but my sources say the event in question was from Microsoft's 25th Anniversary Event in September 2000.
I could use a more authoritative source than knowyourmeme, though, so someone else is free to chime in there. There's a newsletter referencing it as early as 2001[0], so that seems to suggest well ahead of 2006.