Make Windows Defender in Windows 10 to block Adware

One more reason to stick with Windows Defender is it now detect and blocks adware as well, you need to turn on PUA Protection in Windows for that. Microsoft Antivirus, which is available with the name Windows Defender in Windows 8 and 10, just getting better day by day, recently it has detected and removed the rogue eDellroot certificate from Dell user systems.

Few days back, Microsoft announced a new opt-in feature (PUA Protection) for enterprise users, which on enabling detects potentially unwanted applications (PUA) or adware in real-time, seems doing this also works in Home and Pro version of Windows 10 and other Windows versions as well.

Windows defender PUA Protection

After turning on PUA protection feature with the via Registry hack (see below for instructions), Windows Defender looks for files in downloads folder or %temp% folder, after a file download in the browser they’ll be scanned for bundledware.

When Windows Defender detects unwanted software, it identifies threat starting with name PUA, such as PUA:Win32/Creprote. Users can view blocked software in ‘History’ tab of Windows Defender.

Enabling PUA Protection for Windows Defender in Windows 10

1. Open registry editor by typing regedit in the Run dialog box

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender, right click on Windows Defender and create a new key and name it as MpEngine.

3. Right click on MpEngine key and create new DWORD (32-bit) value, name it as ‘MpEnablePus’ and assign its value as 1 means (PUA protection enabled), give ‘0’ to disable it.

4. Restart your computer, and ensure Windows Defender is running in the background.

Microsoft maintains a database of unwanted software, they regularly add definitions to it when their researchers discover new ones and these definitions along with Microsoft anti-malware definitions will be available for Windows defender, which you can get by clicking ‘update definitions’ in ‘Update’ tab.

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