Many programs, especially "antimalware"-class programs and __especially__ MBAM serve up false positives as valid hits. MBAM serves up common (and innocuous) tracking cookies as malware hits. Nearly everything that MBAM labels as a 'PUP', Potentially Unwanted Program, is bogus. Also, it will serve up data files (metadata, saved data) files from an infection as the infection itself.

Its user interface deliberately does not give its users the proper context to evaluate the severity of a problem. The change came after they made a concerted effort to monetize the app.

MBAM is good at a lot of things (it has traditionally been on top of modern registry hooks and ransomware loaders where other vendors consistently drop the ball) but just because you saw 45 things flagged red doesn't mean you had 45 bits of hostile executable code on your system.

Malware infections aren't a singular entity anymore, they are a stew of items working together to maintain control of your system (exploit, loader, payload [usually a rootkit], defense, c&c). It's often a matter of breaking the chain of processes to 'open up the onion' and regain control of your system.

Yeah, I know. But I definitely counted at least 12 seperate and rather nasty Browser Object based malware programs. Which is a lot better than Norton and Trend Micro, who didn't pick them up at all!