New
#11
Why are you downloading it separate from either Windows Update or Windows Defender Security Center>Virus&Threat>Protection Updates?
If you're not using either of those two methods, your downloading like your pc already doesn't have Windows Defender.
If that's the case you have nobody to blame, but yourself on your high data usage for Windows Defender.
PromU,
The update download sizes identified by WU are often meaningless so you do need to measure it yourself if you want to find out the truth. You need to record your data usage both before and after an update to get a meaningful result - Control panel, Network & sharing centre, {click on the network's name next to the label Connections}, note the data used both before & after updating Windows defender manually through its UI. You need to hope that other network use does not occur while you are measuring or your results will be invalid.
I have just done this on one FCU (x86) computer and the data used was 36MB [but on both a Ver 1703 (x64) computer as well as on another ver 1709 (x64) computer, it was only 2MB]. Perhaps a major change to definitions was required for a particular reason & the first computer had been slightly more out-of-date than the other two {they had all been updated at some stage yesterday}. I'm going to watch update sizes for a few days to check on this.
Thanks for publishing this warning. I had not been bothering to monitor Windows defender update sizes for over a year.
Of course, it could be worse. Bitdefender replaces entire application modules at every update [the minimum you can get away with in Bitdefender is 3GB a month for each computer and that is only by reducing updates to once a day].
Denis
I use O&O Shutup10 to lock down everything, except Defender.
And I stayed on Anniversary Update until last week, when I thought I'd better go for Fall Creators Update and my Mobile ISP gave lots of GBs as a Christmas Promotion.
But now, Definition Updates are indeed sneaking through.
And what else, Huh?
After some extended searching, it seems System32/UsoClient.exe can have its permissions hobbled to give another way of stopping automatic Windows Updates and also Automatic Defender Definition Updates.
See here - How To Install Windows 10 Updates Manually
Make a backup copy of UsoClient.exe before messing with it. Just in case.
The old style Defender Interface can also be found at "%ProgramFiles%\Windows Defender\MSASCui.exe"
If you want to check updates that way.
Happy Holidays
PromU,
I just monitored my first [Ver 1709] WD update for three days and it was roughly 8MB i.e. about 2 1/2 ish MB a day.
Incidentally, I also ran my first [Ver 1703] WD update for three days and it was roughly 9MB i.e. about 2 1/2 plus a little bit MB a day. I am not surprised that they are the same.
[I'm not trying to suggest leaving it for three days is a good idea. I've been tied up on a non-internet task on both these computers so have hardly been connecting them at all.]
Denis