Most Recommended Virus Program is?

[Ketchup]

it's been improved vastly since then and their customer service is top notch, their forums are very helpful as well

about MSE, I don't think it keeps anyone secure according to this:

AV-TEST - Nov/Dec 2013

Funny coincidence though. If you don't download software/go to site that has those viruses in it, you don't get infected.

 

[G73S]

Funny coincidence though. If you don't download software/go to site that has those viruses in it, you don't get infected.

true, for me, I just want to know that I am well protected at least should anything fishy come along the way.

In my experience WSA has stopped every threat I encountered lately. additionally I have the new Gamer's Edition of WSA which has the new Optimizer (sort of like CCleaner and it works very well) I set my options of what I want cleaned, and it cleans daily on schedule, so you install WSA, set your options, and forget that it exists, never saw an AV that light except for Panda, but Panda is filled with FPs so I never will use it again.

it all comes down to what works best for YOU at the end of the day now what I or anyone else may say

 

[PliotronX]

it's been improved vastly since then and their customer service is top notch, their forums are very helpful as well

about MSE, I don't think it keeps anyone secure according to this:

AV-TEST - Nov/Dec 2013

What I like about these tests is a neat little 1-5 scale that is weighted by obscure or 0-day malware but look at the individual page and it is still finding the most prevalent nasties that affect the majority of systems while not slowing down systems to a crawl like Avast, Avira, Panda, etc.. I don't know if it is coincidence, but of all of the infested systems I have worked on, none of them had MSE present, but they did have your bigger name commercial products such as Norton, McRapee, Avast, AVG (especially AVG), and even one with Webroot SecureAnywhere. I don't know why it is such a hot button issue because no single layer of security is a smart plan and certainly paying for and dealing with performance hits when a suitable solution for Windows is available for only the time it takes to download it seems asinine.

 

[Morbus]

I just hope, with all my heart, that you silly folks running Microsoft Security Essentials don't get infected. I really do. But if you think safe browsing will save you, you're sorely mistaken. Some ads, even on well know sites, will get you viruses, and those tend to be the nastiest and latest and most aggressive ones that crap antivirus tend to miss. A lot.

But it's not just ads, the other day I was looking for wallpapers to customize my login screen a bit and this one website called wallpaper.com or whatever tried to serve me a virus when I tried to download a wallpaper.

Granted I was being careless and didn't notice it was an .exe rather than an image, but I was opening loads of wallpapers at once, so it's natural not to look for it (even if I do have a little notifier on the mouse cursor when I'm hovering a link for an exe or something like that - that's Firefox power for you).

So, yeah, again, I really hope you nice folks with MSE don't get caught...

 

[Ketchup]

Apparently, you have never heard of ABP or ABE.

So, yeah, again, I really hope you nice folks with MSE don't get caught...

And I love the way you put that. As if not using the software you approve is illegal or something.

Well, check this out.... shh ..... i don't use av at all on my virtual machines. I have a backup so if I do catch something, just wipe and replace. Like I said, shh. I don't want anyone else on the internet to find out.

 

[ralfy]

I moved away from MSE after reading results from the page I linked to earlier, then used Bitdefender free together with the ff.

- Privatefirewall
- several add-ons for the browser (ABP, NoScript, HTTPs Everywhere, WOT, Cookie Whitelist)
- Malwarebytes free for periodic scanning
- periodic full and differential backups using Acronis; Win system restore points
- online backup of important data files to a free IDrive account

 

[G73S]

I just hope, with all my heart, that you silly folks running Microsoft Security Essentials don't get infected. I really do. But if you think safe browsing will save you, you're sorely mistaken. Some ads, even on well know sites, will get you viruses, and those tend to be the nastiest and latest and most aggressive ones that crap antivirus tend to miss. A lot.

But it's not just ads, the other day I was looking for wallpapers to customize my login screen a bit and this one website called wallpaper.com or whatever tried to serve me a virus when I tried to download a wallpaper.

Granted I was being careless and didn't notice it was an .exe rather than an image, but I was opening loads of wallpapers at once, so it's natural not to look for it (even if I do have a little notifier on the mouse cursor when I'm hovering a link for an exe or something like that - that's Firefox power for you).

So, yeah, again, I really hope you nice folks with MSE don't get caught...

yeah the other day I was doing an IT job at a Concierge company and they had 3 PCs heavily infected with about 90+ viruses. They had MSE on them. Quickly uninstalled them, had them buy a 3 year license for 5 PCs of Webroot Internet Security, and as soon as installed Webroot for them, it removed all the viruses some after a reboot upon its initial scan

 

[LagunaX]

Thanks, just swapped out MSE for Avira free.
No popup nag if u install their toolbar.

 

[Zxian]

Thanks, just swapped out MSE for Avira free.
No popup nag if u install their toolbar.

Toolbars are the worst. What is this, 2002? It's free or it's not. Nagware can stay off my system, thank you. AVG still tries to shove its toolbar through third-party software, so it gets immediately downvoted in my books. Avast has thrown up enough false positives on my files (including plain word documents and MP3s) to make me question the validity of anything it finds.

Windows 7 doesn't "just get infected" from browsing the web. Most issues with infected systems have UAC disabled, or are unpatched.

Most companies are terrible at managing updates and general system security. I've seen plenty of systems infected with all sorts of security software installed. No single software is going to give you protection, and people harping against MSE are using AV Tests (which compares to MSE as a baseline....) or anecdotal evidence.

 

[John Connor]

I stopped using Avira when it hijacked my browser. I had to use safe mode to uninstall the damn thing. Went with Panda Cloud.

 

[mikeymikec]

I just hope, with all my heart, that you silly folks running Microsoft Security Essentials don't get infected. I really do.

And I hope that you don't get infected with whatever AV solution you've got either? Do you believe that whatever AV solution you use will stop anything?

av-test and av-comparatives.org both make the same claim that pretty much every security product on their list is about 90% effective in file detection tests. I find this quite unbelievable, considering I'm removing some sort of malware (inc. adware, PUP) from probably 90% of the computers I see in the course of my work.

However, av-test goes one further in its claim regarding "zero day malware" to suggest that even the worst security products could be anything like 61% effective against this type of threat. For starters, has anyone heard of malware that wasn't a zero-day threat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-day_attack

Ie. malware whose designers would inform the security vendors / affected software makers before they released their malware into the wild? Anyone? Really? Have I missed these al-qaeda-style youtube clips with some computer geek sporting a monocle and stroking a white cat letting the whole world know about their dastardly plan before they set it in motion?

A zero day threat usually takes the form of exploiting (as far as the software companies and white hats are concerned) an unknown vulnerability. That's why it is such a threat, because the first 'the good guys' have heard of it, it's already exploiting vulnerable hardware, leaving the affected software companies scrambling to ascertain the nature of the threat and designing a fix for it. If the IT media is to be believed, these don't happen very often. Considering that most security software essentially works as a code blacklist of sorts ("if code matches what I have in my library of known malware, block it"), for any of those to have even 10% effectiveness would be REMARKABLE, let alone the 61% that "crap MSE" is supposed to have.

MSE, according to av-test (av-comparatives makes a similar claim without the four-week bit) is supposed to have a 91% chance of complete effectiveness against malware discovered in the last four weeks. I think this is a statistic that is beyond the wildest dreams of an AV vendor, and considering how often I'm pulling crap off customers' computers regardless of what security software they have, utter tripe.

Furthermore, I call into question the scoring system that av-test uses. Avast Free has a protection rating of 3.0 out of 6.0, despite having 95% and 98% effectiveness in those tests:
http://www.av-test.org/no_cache/en/tests/test-reports/?tx_avtestreports_pi1[report_no]=134923

Kaspersky allegedly gets 100% in both sets of tests and gets 6.0. Amazing!
http://www.av-test.org/no_cache/en/tests/test-reports/?tx_avtestreports_pi1[report_no]=134995

Let's break this down a bit. Avast Free (why are they comparing Avast Free to KIS?) is, let's say 5% less effective yet gets a 50% lower protection rating? I'm fairly sure that if I dug deeper it'll say "compared to the baseline", but for there to be such a massive difference in ratings between Avast and KIS, the baseline would have to be pretty damn high, yet the baseline product gets a zero rating and the word put out to say the product is crap?

Personally I think the last thing that an organisation like av-test or av-comparatives wants to say is "they're all similarly effective" because that is no good for their sponsorship.

What I also find strange is that since MSE came along, the diversity of security software reviews' results has dropped sharply. It used to be the case that one reviewer would take a multitude of threats, set them against say 10 security products and publish the results, then another research would come along, pick a different multitude of threats against much the same products and come out with quite different results. This was not a surprise because there are hundreds of thousands of threats that have been designed and why on earth would tiny subsets of those be representative of the whole when malware diversity is important to malware designers.

 

[Morbus]

Apparently, you have never heard of ABP or ABE.

ABP for me please. All my 3 Firefox profiles have it, of course.

And again, to refute your idiot "argument", more of a straw man, really, we're talking about people who use Microsoft Security Essencials. In my experience in a few years of general computer support to family and clients alike, those users have NOT heard of ABP and certainly not of ABE.

And I love the way you put that. As if not using the software you approve is illegal or something.

Thanks, but I don't put it like that. I put it like using software the OWNER doesn't approve of is retarded. That goes for Microsoft Security Essentials, but also for Windows XP, for example. This is, of course, only when security is at stake.

Well, check this out.... shh ..... i don't use av at all on my virtual machines. I have a backup so if I do catch something, just wipe and replace. Like I said, shh. I don't want anyone else on the internet to find out.

Well, isn't that common practice? I do exactly the same myself, on both my virtual machines (that I use for testing purposes on my web pages).

I even went bareback a few years back, for like a year and a half. I never had a problem.

And then I chickened out and installed AVG, I think. But this was in 2006 or something.

And I hope that you don't get infected with whatever AV solution you've got either?

Thanks. I know nothing is 100% safe, but some are less safe than others.

 

[Ketchup]

ABP for me please. All my 3 Firefox profiles have it, of course.

Good. It is so odd to get on a computer without it now, isn't it?

Well, isn't that common practice? I do exactly the same myself, on both my virtual machines (that I use for testing purposes on my web pages).

One would hope. A guy in our group distributes a VMs to the team for one of our customers (their software still only supports XP) and puts AV on every one.

Thanks. I know nothing is 100% safe, but some are less safe than others.

Very true.

 

[Morbus]

Good. It is so odd to get on a computer without it now, isn't it?

Unbearable, yeah.

 

[flexy]

I swear by Kaspersky AV and I use it for years already. Excellent detection rate and rather small footprint and practically zero impact on performance. I wouldn't want any other AV, ever.

 

[blurredvision]

I use Malwarebytes Pro myself. I'm not adventurous enough on the internet to get viruses so it sits bored 99.9% of the time, it does block the occasional web address from an ad or other mis-click from a search.

When I get to work and put on my IT hat, I do the following in order and it's honestly never failed me:

1. rkill - .scr and .com files are available so you're usually able to run it, even with an exe hijack
2. full Malwarebytes scan
3. TDSSkiller scan

After a reboot, I'll do that same thing again, in that order. Sometimes safe mode is involved, sometimes not. If those 3 don't get it, then I bring in ComboFix and it cleans it the rest of the way out.

 

[nemesismk2]

I swear by Kaspersky AV and I use it for years already. Excellent detection rate and rather small footprint and practically zero impact on performance. I wouldn't want any other AV, ever.

I've only recently started using Kaspersky Internet Security 2014 but i've found that it's quick to do scans and easy to use.

 

[G73S]

I've only recently started using Kaspersky Internet Security 2014 but i've found that it's quick to do scans and easy to use.

yes and it slows down your internet browsing like heck and is not compatible with Nero 2014 suite

I have a 2 year / 3 PC license for KIS, please buy it off me it has like 1 year and 10 months left on it and isn't being used at all

 

[gammaray]

Most Recommended Virus Program is?

i'd say, get a trojan horse!

 

[Morbus]

Yeah, that'll do it.

 

[thedosbox]

Easiest way of stopping the nasty stuff? Stop using an administrator account as your daily driver:

http://arstechnica.com/information-...ows-flaws-mitigated-by-removing-admin-rights/

 

[gammaray]

Easiest way of stopping the nasty stuff? Stop using an administrator account as your daily driver:

http://arstechnica.com/information-...ows-flaws-mitigated-by-removing-admin-rights/

yep, but that's freaking annoying for someone who knows what he's doing.

But yes, when you install windows 7, by default you create an administrator account. Once you have installed all your programs, create a user account and log in with that...

 

[mikeymikec]

From what I've seen, most malware on newer versions of XP just require standard user rights.

I guess the malware designers realised that one can wreak enough havoc with just user rights

 

[thedosbox]

yep, but that's freaking annoying for someone who knows what he's doing.

If someone cares about security, it's a small inconvenience to have to type in a password occasionally. Most properly designed programs don't need administrator privileges for daily use (a few hardware monitoring utilities aside).

From what I've seen, most malware on newer versions of XP just require standard user rights.

Not sure what "newer version of XP" you're talking about, but nobody who cares about security should still be using XP.

 

[mikeymikec]

Newer versions than XP is what I meant to type.