Secunia PSI question

At the behest of a veteran member here, I installed Secunia PSI to see how it works and if my system would benefit.

Well, it was very adept at scanning all of the software I have installed and informing me if it was up to date or not. But what I found a bit annoying is that it does not care for end-of-life products. Any software that isn't on the "active" list for updates is flagged. Just because a software application is old doesn't mean it is any more vulnerable than a later version. Anyway, I was able to find a rules section where you can have the PSI ignore certain folders.

It's really interesting how it found newer updates to software I had recently updated myself. I wonder how this software works. I'm guessing that Secunia keeps a massive software database that is frequently updated and PSI just does a check-up with it and compare the version numbers, as well as the paths for downloading the latest updates. Very convenient!


I have a habit of turning off automatic updates on all of my installed software, except for mission critical programs like anti-virus and Windows updates. Why? Because I don't want things launching and performing downloads when I'm in the middle of doing something and start to suffer from performance issues. So, I just periodically run checks myself, or set software to check for updates but request acknowledgement to download before doing it.