Earlier this week Microsoft Development blogs posted an update about its SmartScreen Application Reputation ranking software for Internet Explorer. In the post, Microsoft had some statistics about users downloading malicious Web applications and the pop-up warnings that IE delivers to users warning them about potentially harmful downloads.
Chet Wisniewski of Sophos Security is calling shenanigans on Microsoft’s statistics. In a blog post on Sophos’ blog, Naked Security, Wisniewski says “Microsoft is comparing Apples to…nothing.” Microsoft’s post says that users get two pop-up warnings a year which Wisniewski says means that IE users make 20 downloads a year. Wisniewski looks at these numbers and thinks something is not quite right in Microsoft land.