A few issues with this product.

I decided to give this product some testing on one of my machines. There are things I like, and things I dislike or aren't working right.

1) Why is Thunderbird no longer supported? Yes I am aware the on-access scanner works with any email client. However it should be integrated, especially the spam filter. It says it only works up to Thunderbird 5, really? This is a major turnoff, as I simply will not buy it because of this reason. I enjoy the inclusion of Bullguard in Thunderbird, it's a selling point. Thunderbird is ESR at this point, so don't say it takes a lot of development time to integrate a product with constant changes.

2) PUP detection is very low. Roughly 75-80% of all PUPS I tried weren't recognized. Some version of conduit were caught, other versions were not. Overall it seems like the PUP aspect is 'half baked' which is a real pity as this could be a huge selling point since pups themselves are pretty volatile and troublesome at times. This aspect seems 'under developed' in the product.

Overall I like it, but those are a couple of sticking points that would discourage my license purchase. If development could be spent on an useless feature (that less than 10% of your customers would even use) like the 'inaccurate' stolen PC locator which there are MUCH better other products for that, then why can't a few hours be spent fixing the product to work with current Thunderbird versions? It seems silly.

 

It was explained in another thread that this is due to a rapid development cycle of Thunderbird. As for the ESR version support, this has not been decided yet as it would require the plug-in to be written virtually from scratch. It is possible that support will be added in future versions.

From my observation, detection of PUP (potentially unwanted/unsafe programs?) is very good and ESET detects many PUAs that other products do not detect. Please provide us with more information about which PUAs are not detected; it's impossible to comment on it any further without knowing what particular applications you mean.

My opinion about Anti-Theft is a bit different, especially for laptop owners it's useful to have this feature included in the product without needing to pay for the service to another company. Anti-Theft is also present in ESET Mobile Security. In the future, the portal my.eset.com will allow users to track all their devices, be it laptops or mobile phones and the functionality of the portal is planned to be extended even more so that every user can take advantage of it.

 

i tend to (for once) agree with the op and i dont think we ever agree but only about the anti theft. im not at all saying its not useful but for me i dont find it useful and i will probably not be using it.

i however find eset regardless of test results etc etc eset has excellent detection and i have rearely seen it let things through in daily use. i am a bit disappointed in test results at times but eset will always be on of my top go to av's unless something changes drastically.

also remember regardless of the plug in eset will still scan anything that is being downloaded or that is already on the hdd or web traffic. so even without the plug in you are very well protected.

didnt mean to but in this is just my 2 cents.

 

Hello,

Classification of potentially unwanted applications, potentially unsafe applications, suspicious applications and so forth not only has some degree of variation from vendor to vendor, but also as to whether they are enabled or disabled by default.

A review of the settings in your installation of ESET Smart Security may be helpful in determining whether the software was optimally configured for detection of these classifications.

And, of course, if you believe you have found a file ESET should be detecting but does not, you can submit it to ESET's virus lab for analysis by following the instructions in ESET Knowledgebase Article 141, "How to submit virus or potential false positive samples to ESET's labs."

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

I manually enabled all options in ESET to scan for these, but found it sporadic at best in the ability to detect them.

Also, I recommend removal of the Thunderbird Plugin altogether. Having it there only causes confusion because people don't understand why it would only support up to version x5. For me, I saw that and immediately felt ESET wasn't competent in developing the product, so for image sake, just pull it. Bullguard (and many other AVs) can easily keep up with Thunderbird, why not Eset? The antispam features of Bullguard in Thunderbird is a big selling point for me, and the integration within the product is an added bonus.

I can tell you this aspect alone kept me from buying the product for the 5 PC's we have here, so consider that you are likely losing a fair amount of revenue as it sits. Perhaps tossing some man hours at it might be a wise decision, Thunderbird doesn't change that much anymore. I will re-evaluate Eset next year, and see where it stands.

Thanks.

 

Hello,

If you can send me a private message with the email address you used to send the missed potentially unwanted code to ESET's virus lab I can check with them to see what the status of adding detection is, or if there is some other reason for non-detection (did not meet classification criteria, categorized as a different kind of threat and so forth).

ESET may very well add support for some versions of Mozilla Thunderbird in the future--that's not a decision I am privy, too, though. Integration is not just a matter of performing generic network and file I/O scanning, but working with the mail client's API to provide functionality for things like scanning (and re-scanning) mailbox contents, quarantining malicious objects without affecting the integrity of the structure of the mailbox, and so forth.

Implementing, testing and verifying that type of functionality takes engineering resources (developers, QA, project managers and so forth) and when a product like a web browser or e-mail client goes into a rapid release schedule and there is considerable flexibility (shall we say) as to how their API works, that means a look at how those resources are utilized internally gets a hard look, especially in the case of something that changes so rapidly.

The best suggestion that I have is that you post your request for compatibility in the Future Changes to ESS message thread stuck at the top of this forum. Employees from all parts of ESET keep an eye on that message thread (and similar ones), even if they do not reply in them. Posting there is a way to ensure your voice is heard on the direction of the software.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

Maybe they were intentionally not detected for a reason. Whenever you encounter a file that is not detected and you think it should be, submit it to ESET as per the instructions here.