All the time I'm reading snake oil threads, I wonder how individuals can determine very clearly that this one or the other one is the best. Did this guys test all of them 50+ on their own machines and did real o-day test etc? There are so many AV crap out there where I wouldn't even dare to say which is the best (all snake oil by the way, .. anyway) I assume that these clowns only blabla what they have read in the newspaper which was paid by snake oil companies, NO
I think a lot of people would be shocked to learn that many of these Anti-Malware top list sites pay to get on them.
to be fair... ESET isn't really ever on those lists and yet ESET has been mentioned a fair few times in this thread.
guess why? You and me cannot find out if that crap works better than another suite. They all want to make money since AV crap is a big ... hahaha... a very very big industry directly connected to MS, Guess what these guys smoke and drink and .... puh ... behind closed doors. Btw, all industry stuff all over the world is handled like this not to mention higher levels like up to the White House and other locations of this planet. Guys WAKE UP, do yourself a favor
think you should go to a political forum or some s**t this is about technology not life's corruption lol
You know, I read this whole post and what I think is that there are always noobies joining forums like this one. I consider myself always to be a noobi because software tech is far and wide. When I was at the launch of Win 7 in Montreal we had networking pro with us. Some dude just came over and asked him ''How can I see my pictures and have music on my Media Center?''. The It turned and pointed at me and said ''ask this guy he's more in desktop support'' I am best at desktop, lousy at networking, programming, servers and I could go on and on. This site and Shaun's 7, 8, 10 forums are among my favorites If someone asks me a question and I know the answer, I will try my best to tell him or her. I think it would just be fair to maybe explain to users why AV is snake oil? why a keygen is dangerous, why update Flash player can be hazardous so on and so forth. I have answered the same questions time and time again because some are new and just don't understand (I'm not talking about repeating the same answer all over the forum like the update question vs install of Win 10) I mean just answer the users LIKE: (Anyone who is familiar with how hash functions work will immediately see why this is an utterly flawed approach. All it takes to change the hash value of any file is to change a single bit in the file. That is, you could have a file 100 GB in size (that is 800 billion bits) but if you change only one *bit* of that file, the hash value will completely change.) So, please feel free and explain it to those who don't know. Thanks
Why AV programs don't do as much good as you'd think: 1) They use crypter programs to inject the malicious code into system processes 2) Said code is obfuscated and extracts in small chunks at a time so it's not something you can pre-scan 3) Like Zardoc said, a tiny change in the exe can fool most basic a/v scans. They scan chunks of the file and method block a lot of things, but It still lets a lot of things through 4) Most people don't update their a/v program often enough 5) Malicious files are often spread through social media or nefarious websites way faster than companies can react to the threat 6) They're tricky. They will abuse the fact that a lot of people don't have file extensions turned on, so they hide files as things like "somemovie.torrent.exe" and give it a torrent icon. These are just a few of the issues associated with trying to block this sort of thing. So it seems like people should double their efforts and stay on top of these definitions and stuff, right? No, not really. The programs don't really do much to prevent malware these days. They can block certain things once you're already infected, but it's really only about reducing damage. It's not about blocking the infection. This is just the malicious troll type of malware. There are scam sites that many people often fall for offering to fix their pc if they purchase a license. There are rootkits. There are keyloggers. There are backdoor programs. There are just about an infinite way that people can infect your system and what do they all have in common? You have to run an executable file like an exe (some other ways, but mostly those) So yes, the best method is not to get the best anti-virus program. The best method is to never run anything from a suspicious link or website. Just about every web browser these days will tell you that an exe file is potentially dangerous. It's a lot easier to spot the stuff these days. IMO people need to spread the awareness to avoid these things and stop promoting these a/v programs that really don't help. They just give you a false sense of security.
It's been 3 days since i started using brain.exe + Windows Defender and i have to say it's awesome. No more resource hog over here.
Thanks a bunch Murphy. I'm sure that you have educated some users into at least thinking twice before going into a click frenzy.