Differences in malware infection rates reported by Microsoft vs. antivirus vendor

MrBrian · Jan 15, 2014

From Half of China's computers infected by malware, study finds:

It's not completely clear why the Microsoft and Panda studies had such different results, since they both collected data from each company's widely installed software.

[...]

Part of the discrepancy can be explained by the different time scales. Microsoft's study covers a three-month period, Panda Labs' an entire year.

Yet Panda's reported infection rates aren't merely four times as large as Microsoft's — they're 30 to 100 times as large.
Click to expand...

Do you think there's any fudging going on here by one or both companies?

dawgg · Jan 15, 2014

The article seems to have most bases covered.

I'd also add the fact that MSRT only detects and removes prevalent threats.
If it's not going to detect the longer tail of threats, it's not going to count them as infections.
This and MSRT kicking in after the AV has had a chance to detect (count) and remove the threat are the biggest factors of the difference IMO.

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Differences in malware infection rates reported by Microsoft vs. antivirus vendor

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