Ever since Microsoft Vista chief Jim Allchin talked about his son not using anti-virus in a recent teleconference with journalists, the world has been abuzz with claims Vista won’t need AV software. Now Jim Allchin has clarified his statements on the official Windows Vista Blog.

The speed with which news stories appeared on tech sites around the world claiming that Jim Allchin said words to the effect that his seven year old son didn’t need anti-virus on his computer has shocked the Vista chief.

To counter the endless news stories, his official Vista blog carries a clarifying statement about what he actually said. To paraphrase, he explained that his son was able to use Vista without AV protection because it was locked down with parental controls, meaning no instant messaging, email or other common vectors of attack, and this coupled with Vista improved security model meant that it was possible to run without AV in this kind of heavily locked down situation.

Jim then said that most users will need to run anti-virus software for all the usual reasons.
You can click on the link above, but here’s Jim’s post in full:

Wow, you describe a specific situation and suddenly people extrapolate something completely different!  During a recent discussion with journalists about the release to manufacturing for Windows Vista, I made a comment about how attacks on the Internet are getting more and more sophisticated, and some of the security features in Windows Vista really help our customers.

This somehow morphed into people thinking I said customers shouldn’t use antivirus software with Windows Vista. When the articles and blogs started appearing, I asked the PR folks to send me a copy of the transcript of the call so I could read it over and see if I said something I didn’t mean.

After reading the transcript, I could certainly see that what I said wasn’t as clear as it could have been, and I’m sorry for that. However, it is also clear from the transcript that I didn’t say that users shouldn’t run antivirus software with Windows Vista!

In fact, later in the call, I explicitly made this point again, because I had realized I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. It’s important for me that our customers are using the appropriate security solutions for the right situations, whether that’s security functionality integrated in the operating systems, or add-on products.

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