Did you choose your firewall according to Matousec ?

Discussion in 'other firewalls' started by bollity, May 10, 2009.

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  1. bollity

    bollity Registered Member

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    I must say that i tried the free online armor and pc tools firewalls just after i saw the good results at Matousec.I was a sygate user for about 5 years and now i want to change because it is very outdated. Pc tools have a known problem that cause freeze because of their enhanced security verfication, so i did choose online armor free with no big problems till now.
    Is this really a good choice ? do you choose your firewall according to Matousec tests ? is their test really trusted and dependable on ?
     
  2. SamSpade

    SamSpade Registered Member

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    I won't say Matousec was my *only* reason for trying Online Armor, but it sure didn't turn me off to the idea. :D

    Sam


    |||
     
  3. hayc59

    hayc59 Updates Team

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    Not Only Hell NO....But No Way!!
     
  4. renegade08

    renegade08 Registered Member

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    Most people choose their Fw if it's running well on their PC and have positive experience. Some of them have demands such as p2p, online games, etc.

    The test aren't always the benchmark from which you will pick your FW. Even you can choose couple of top-tiers Fw's but if you don't like them, you probably will go to something else.
    All depends what are you searching for: free or paid, and are you ready to pay money. Anyway you probably should test several products and then decide.
    Take in mind that always can be some possible conflict with other security applications.

    With many tests come many different results.

    I don't want to start a "flame war", but you can look at this, just for your information ( AFAIK the results are little old).

    http://www.testmypcsecurity.com/view_results_xp.html

    http://www.testmypcsecurity.com/view_results_vista.html

    http://www.testmypcsecurity.com/
     
  5. rdsu

    rdsu Registered Member

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    No.

    HIPS features in a firewall is not important to me...
     
  6. Carver

    Carver Registered Member

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    No, I didn't use Matousec as my guide in choosing the Comodo firewall. That was choosen by trial and error, the fact that it turned out to be the best performer is just a coindence. Well CIS's performance wasn't a coindence, just my choseing the top performer was ;)
    @rdsu I had a seperate Hips application (I don't remember which one). When I got Comodo Firewall Pro (Thats what it was called before CIS if you remember), I just eliminated a paid program when I got comodo.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2009
  7. bollity

    bollity Registered Member

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    I agree that trial is the best thing to do in this cases. For example jetico firewall have very good score in matousec but when i tried it i uninstalled it after 5 minutes.
    Test have a big influence on choosing a firewall and antivirus , avira for example became popular and well known after the tests that showed it have best detection rate.
     
  8. QBgreen

    QBgreen Registered Member

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    While the information Matousec provides is very interesting, my answer is no.
     
  9. Fuzzfas

    Fuzzfas Registered Member

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    God forbid, no! I search for the lightest firewall and as a matter of fact, this has been lately making me think of trying again Vista, so that i can simply use the built-in firewall and get over with the 3rd party firewalls for a while.
     
  10. twl845

    twl845 Registered Member

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    I have never used his info. I found Comodo and then OnlineArmor reading posts on Wilders. Originally I used ZoneAlarm on a tip from someone when ZA was lean.
     
  11. hayc59

    hayc59 Updates Team

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    Yes to old to even consider, but thanks anyways!!
     
  12. AKAJohnDoe

    AKAJohnDoe Registered Member

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    Being capable of independent thought processes, no, Matousec did not influence my decision whatsoever.
     
  13. vizhip

    vizhip Registered Member

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    I had never heard of Matousec when I chose Online Armor... but after seeing posts about Matousec, I finally checked it out and was pleasantly surprised at how well Online Armor performed...

    Regards -
    -Bob
     
  14. MikeNash

    MikeNash Security Expert

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    Just a note for new readers: This is a vendor sponsored (Comodo) site and as such results need to be taken with a grain of salt.
     
  15. tipstir

    tipstir Registered Member

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    PC Tools Firewall Plus v3.14 is what you want to use forget 4, 5 or higher. Look in this thread your on for 3.14 there is a link for that version. I used that for couple of years but my Caller ID Server never seem to run stable enough. Sygate wasn't that great but for the time it was better than Kero and all the rest of them. I had switched over to Rising everything on the network handshake very well. I've tried OA, CO, NORT all them a lot are okay for some, I know OA team had tired to help me out but their free OA blocked access. Outpost was okay, Armor2net seems to have gone rouge.

    Sometimes you can't following these sits that tell what the best is.. There is one called Top10 Reviews. Then there are those in UK mostly free ones based on the users and the editor. Still kind of 50/50.
     
  16. hayc59

    hayc59 Updates Team

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    Hello Mike I kinda thought that was weird
    after reading the whole thing[especially 'about us']...thanks for the salt and info
     
  17. MikeNash

    MikeNash Security Expert

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    No dramas. The site suffers from bias and cannot be relied upon at all.
     
  18. Rednose!

    Rednose! Registered Member

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    Mike :)

    Matousec isn't an independent tester either, because they accept payments from vendors. Comodo once payed them for a test, as did the Tall Emu ! How reliable can such tests be ?

    Greetz, Red.
     
  19. MikeNash

    MikeNash Security Expert

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    Red,

    Paying someone to do a test doesn't take away the independance unless the payment influences the result. All it does in Matousec's case is generate an income for him when vendors want to get a fast retest (which he's since taken steps to eliminate).

    Test my PC Security was setup when Comodo "fell out" with Matousec and decided he wasn't the "independent security expert that confirmed Comodo was best" after all.

    Matousec conducts tests to a published methodology, with published results and published source code. Test My PC Security lets users - with their biases and differing points of view - test software and publish the results in an ad-hoc way.

    For all of the nonsense about "for the users, by the users" I know from direct personal experience - if the user doesn't like you, your results don't get listed. I know, from direct personal experience - piss one of these guys off - and they threaten to adjust your results.

    I also know, from direct personal experience, that last year build 127 of OA would have taken the top spot from Comodo - but those results were sent to someone in Comodo to decide whether or not they would be posted. And they weren't.

    Even aside from deliberate, malicious bias there are situations where results maybe borderline or edge cases and each independent user may well decide a different way for a different product. It's an uncontrolled nonsense - perhaps well meaning on behalf of some of the users - but certainly not all of them - yet it is published as fact.

    Lets take the perennial favourite CIS vs OA. If a CIS fan tests CIS and sees an ambiguous prompt, he's going to pass it. If he sees the same prompt from OA, he's going to fail it. The same would likely apply in reverse. It's human nature - people will give the benefit of the doubt to a friend, and not to an "enemy" or a stranger.

    I've kept my peace on these activites for over a year. When you compare a shallow marketing campaign of a vendor, wrapped up in a cloak of self-righteousness against proper independent tests as a way of trying to discredit those tests then, I'm sorry Red, but you're drinking the Comodo Kool-Aid and you need to be called on it.


    Mike
     
  20. Rednose!

    Rednose! Registered Member

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    Mike :)

    I am no Comodo fan, nor a CIS fan ( I don't even use it ). But I don't trust testers that are sponsored OR accept payments. So I take both Test my PC Security and Matousec with a grain of salt. That is what I have told Melih, and that is what I am telling you !

    Greetz, Red.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2009
  21. hayc59

    hayc59 Updates Team

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    Comodo Kool-Aid==Classic!!
     
  22. Fuzzfas

    Fuzzfas Registered Member

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    ALL tests have a bias. ALL tests are plagued by either personal bias or economical ties with vendors or both. Not just in firewall testing but in everything. There are certain magazines that promote always certain AVs. There are "respectable" sites that do hardware review and always are pro- Intel or pro-Nvidia or AMD/ATI and so on.

    In Matousec, the bias alone can be seen, not only for the fact that he ranks together apples and oranges (like Mamutu together with firewalls) , but also by the simple fact that his "reccommended", "very good", "good", "not reccommended" is based purely on arbitrary limits set by Matousec himself. So, basically, Mamutu or Threatfire, become "not reccommended" because they don't fair well to his tests, as if these 2 software, were made to work in the same way as classical HIPS.

    It's all about marketing fellas. Marketing and pubblicity.
     
  23. Stem

    Stem Firewall Expert

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    I take personal insult with that statement. I have no ties in any respect to any firewall/security vendor. I make various tests and post the results I find.

    @all

    I am tired of coming onto this forum to help users then finding most of my time is spent having to go through all posts hunting down personal attacks/ flame wars etc etc. It is like a kiddies playground at times with "Mine is bigger than yours" syndrome.

    I'm off .
     
  24. ASM

    ASM Registered Member

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    I choose the boot that fit my foot...:-*
     
  25. alex_s

    alex_s Registered Member

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    There is no need to trust, since the tests are ABSOLUTELY transparent. Open sources, open methodology and no permanent leader. And yes, methodology itself is questionable, but the tests are OK if you understand what they are about. BTW, this is from the matousec site:
    ===
    Recently, Agnitum Ltd. released a new free version of Outpost Firewall and also Tall Emu Pty Ltd released a new version of their Online Armor Personal Firewall. A great opportunity for Proactive Security Challenge testing.

    We have also included the latest version of Privatefirewall and three products that have not been tested in our challenge before. These were CA Internet Security Suite Plus, eConceal Pro for Windows and ThreatFire Free. How did they score? See the results of Proactive Security Challenge.
    ===

    Do you see here something about the payments ? I don't, I only see that the products released new versions and this is why they were tested.
     
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