In today's Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg reveals the newest insult to our privacy brought to us by Microsoft. Unlike all the other spyware programs out there, Microsoft's one does not eliminate third-party tracking cookies. Now, why would Microsoft do that? It's because Microsoft's software is designed for advertisers, not for you.

The software offers two kinds of scans: a quick, five-minute version, and a longer version that took about half an hour on my test machine. But the scans missed some spyware found by Spy Sweeper. In particular, Microsoft missed "tracking cookies," small files deposited by Web companies, often without your knowledge or permission, that track your online activities. The Microsoft program deliberately doesn't look for these. Microsoft officials say they are concerned that some legitimate cookies, such as those that store Web-site login information, could be unfairly labeled as spyware. They promise to add tracking-cookie detection in the future.

Even worse is the way the program handles another spyware problem,
the hijacking of Web-browser home pages and search pages. This is a spyware technique in which the home and search pages in a Web browser are replaced by pages selected by a spyware company, and it's nearly impossible for a user to restore his or her own selections.

The usual way of handling this, with programs like Spy Sweeper, is to detect the page changes and to restore the user's original choices. But the Microsoft program tries to replace the spyware pages with home and search pages from MSN, Microsoft's own online service. This smacks of the same kind of coercion the spyware authors are using.

Microsoft insists it isn't trying to drive people to MSN. It says it can't tell if a user's own choice of a home or search page was "secure," so it defaults to setting the home and search pages to a site it knows is secure, its own MSN site. But the user's choice should rule here, not Microsoft's...

It's good that Microsoft is finally offering users tools to protect their Windows computers. But it's going to have to do much better, and it's going to have to avoid the perception that it's using security as a tool to promote or favor its own products.