Editors' Choice - WSA 2013!!

There's nothing wrong with Rubenking's enthusiasm for the product as a whole. He does praise and criticise it too. Of the criticisms, PrevxHelp has already said they'll be improving on those issues.

 

I know, right? - A few years ago that would have bothered me too. - But now I am happy running Webroot SecureAnywhere. (I have even bought some licenses, before the closed beta was prolonged) - I don't know if I am really secure everywhere now and yes, I did see test results that didn't look so good. - The other people in this group saw them too and so they all are happy and cheerful that it got at least some editor's choice award..

The thing is: WRSA is so light ... not slowing things down here .. and scanning (no matter how the modus is called: deep or full or quick) doesn't take ages! that (!) are the most important features to me since I am never infected anyways! - So I ditched Avira finally and now I am trusting WRSA alone that it would stop something if there would be something (there never is, only fp's :-D). And my system was never faster than it is now.

I am not bold enough right now to use no AV at all, so I run the thing that is the lightest AV available and if it also is some editor's choice (which makes me also chuckle every year ) ... I take that as a bonus, but enthusiasm you will only see from ME if WRSA scores always 99.x percent in every serious AV-test.

Long way to go, many editor's choice awards to come. - We will see a lot enthusiasm on the way and I say: that is not a bad thing, but positive spirit.

If WRSA would be my "baby" (and it is Joe's as we all know ) I probably would be proud of every award too. Same as you I guess.

Okay, it would be better if it weren't always the same (?) "newspaper" apparently, doing the "reviews", and instead a more "serious" organisation, that's right.

All in its proper time I say. They are going somewhere with that cloud AV, I am sure. Especially because other AV-vendors seem to copy things years after Prevx sort of started it (if I am not wrong about that).

Btw: Techfox1976 somehow works for Webroot (I believe), of course he is happy with the award and the "review".

 

Number one he does not work for Webroot,but even if he did,how does that make his opinion anymore or less valid than anyone elses.At least he doesn't create numerous names and flame the same threads over and over like some in this forum.AT least he isn't that fool from Melih from comodo trashing competitors products in multiple forums,or Nick from SAS making baseless accusations against testing organizations because his product just plain is an abomination.Fox speaks his mind and is quite objective.He has no means ever given Webroot a free pass.Is Webroot perfect?No.no solution is.But,it's kept 2 of my pcs clean for a year now.Speaks for itself.

 

I use the business version of WSA on my family's computers in Oregon, California, Hawaii, Arizona, and a few other places I can't recall right now. Trust me, I've been bitten by the bad things too, and I know it's not without faults*. I used to have complete on my parents' computer, but then they forgot their password. Nightmare. And as a business, I can distribute, so I can set up another business with a copy of the business product for them, then manage their console and security directly no matter where I am, which is value-added, so I can charge well for that. Combine that with the fact that I can pretty much solidly prevent and remove malware for these customers, where the old solutions couldn't, and I'm set. So yes, of course I like the award and review. (Though it was McAfee I worked for previously, with interaction with almost every industry AV over the course of over ten years.)

Then consider that in - what was it? - late 90's?... I was using Trend Micro when they didn't suck and were better than Norton and McAfee (The two only big players back then) because they weren't able to be randomly killed by any threat. Used Trend until around 2007 or 8 or 9, then they stopped supporting the 2005 version. I wasn't fond of the sudden yearly "new stuff!" updates, nor was I happy that after renewing 2005 two months before, they were going to force me to pay for a full cost new version.

I paid. Reluctantly. Then I got the "Why have I been using this all these years again?" moment when the installer did a full scan and found 13 things in my virus samples folder on drive H. Didn't bother to find the other 200 or so, and all of them had been submitted to Trend back in 2001. Nice to know that it could catch them years later. Some of them. Oh, yeah, and it used an average of 12% of my CPU constantly. So I got a refund.

Went hunting for a new antivirus at that point. I tried one and when my WoW guild got phished with a video.exe file, I tried the other AV against it on an old test machine. The scan found nothing. So I ran the virus. "Hey, look! TDSS rootkit!" the AV exclaimed. "I see it! There it is!! It just installed itself! It just *Reboot*..." and then the AV was dead after the rootkit installed itself. Removed the rootkit by hand and promptly gave up on that AV. Admittedly, it's difficult to justify an AV when none have even triggered an alarm because I just don't get infections.

Ended up moving to Webroot for a while in its old incarnation because it used Sophos for the AV engine and put Spy Sweeper on top of that. So it was really good stuff. Sophos is an enterprise engine and had top-notch capabilities and detection levels. SpySweeper just added on top of that.

But honestly, I use AV for POSSIBLE convenience. Under the extremely off chance that something comes in, it creates a chance that it'll be easier to block or remove. If it weren't for the utter failure of stuff like Java and browsers to stay secure, I'd be AV free. I'm more fond of using my computer for me instead of paying CPU fees to threat insurance.

Being the local computer geek with a penchant and skill at removing malware though (manually!! I don't trust MBAM and other stuff to not brick the system more often than I like), I get to see the sordid underbelly of everybody elses' failures to stay safe. At least I can generally trust WSA to not screw things up and I haven't had any major problems and no surviving infections on any systems I've installed it on. So yes, again, I like good news.

In other news, I'm also a published novelist and multi-published author. I run a 3-SSD 240GB RAID5 array for my system partition and a 3-HDD 1TB RAID5 array for my data partition, plus a 20GB RAM drive for decent speed on some things when I desire since the 32GB of RAM is pretty solid overkill otherwise. I have three monitors at home, one of which is active 3D. I play WoW and won a free signed copy of the Burning Crusade collector's edition from Blizzard by taking a screenshot at Christmas in WoW. I have three cats, am happily married to a woman I've been with for almost 15 years now, and am moving in a few weeks. I was in the beta for Planetside 2 before I was allowed to tell anybody there was a beta for Planetside 2. I shoot people, then go home and blow them up... with a DSLR and 13x19 printer, mind you. I've worked in the porn industry (as a system administrator. > ) two different times in my life. I have a penchant for geeky things, I managed to find an OTG cable for my phone, and my computer desk has a motherboard with a Phenom II x4 955 and 8 GB of DDR3-1600 RAM in it. I wear glasses, have some fine motor function problems developing recently, and am usually right. Except when I'm wrong. Which isn't as often as a lot of people would like.

* So has anybody else noticed that the "system events have been inspected since startup" count only increments when the GUI is open?

 

XD I didn't expect to suddenly become the center of attention. I mean, at least TH is a Prevx forum helper and stuff. XD

I can't even say that I can give it kudos for "keeping my system clean for a year" right now since it's never been exposed to anything to keep it clean from. ._. But hey, it's stayed out of my way for a year and it's made my work of keeping other systems clean a hell of a lot easier. ^.^ Though it did just decide to flag a Curse client update as malware.

 

Part quote:

Agree with those sentiments 100%, & for the record I'm having a brilliant morning, I'm happy & it's going to stay that way !

 

Do you have any evidence of this, or are you just trolling?

 

Congrats to Webroot. I've been back to using WSA the past few weeks. In terms of design, I believe WSA is far above the competition. It is simply amazing what Webroot does with such a small package, and tiny amount of system resources.

There are a number of programs out there that offer superb protection, but many of them need 1gb of HD space, and/or 80-100meg of ram, etc... WSA is the program they should all be trying to mimic. This is probably the best designed AV program ever.

 

Congrats to Joe, and the rest of the Webroot team!!! Keep it up!

 

You speak of other forum members "trashing competitors products" and then in the next breath you trash SAS yourself.
You seem a bundle of contradictions yourself.
Best wishes and the best of luck to you.

 

He was talking about representatives from specific companies trashing the competitors' products. Regular forum members are expected to be able to trash things, but when you work for a company, you're not allowed to trash things.

 

I would hope this is a sign of the industry moving away from needing to scan every file every time. On install, most AVs just perform a quick scan but then remind you that you should run a full scan. The deep scan performed by WSA is just as strong as the full scan of other AVs - there is no need to run a full scan ever for a consumer user, so, from where WSA is concerned, that's as full of a scan as you could possibly need.

 

Hi PrevxHelp,

The issue here is not what WSA is scanning (Full/Deep/Quick or whatever).

A review-considered relevant by the Webroot staff- is misleading; now, instead of stepping in and correct the mistake, Webroot staff wants to change the whole terminology in pc security to "fit" to their product.

For 99.99% of AV's on the market a FULL scan is a FULL scan; only Webroot wants to name a Quick scan a "Deep" scan and furthermore wants to be accepted as a Full scan, done in 40sec.....

Is beyond comprehension what I see here...

Sincerely,
Claudiu

 

Our deep scan is as effective as their full scan. There is no need to run a full scan, so the deep scan should be accepted as a full scan. In the context of WSA, the terms are interchangeable unless the user wants to scan idle files which are not harmful.

 

Hardly.

They skip potentially hundreds of thousands of files and registry locations based on making some semi-intelligent decisions.
You can easily see that they don't scan everything in RAM, most vividly if you memory-patch a running process to become a known threat and then remove the origin, then run a scan.
Most won't scan certain attached drives (like cameras and MP3 players and phones).
Even more will only run a "Full" scan once a week.
They also won't scan unmounted hard drive partitions despite the fact that the system knows about them.
They won't look inside encrypted archives and most have a limit on how deep they will inspect nested archives.

So how exactly, by your claimed definition, are they doing a full scan?

Numerous people have absolutely no problem comprehending it, so I don't think anybody is quite certain why you are incapable of this comprehension.

 

The thing is: Prevx/Webroot Secureanywhere *is* just different!

Takes a while until you do understand that especially if you have known so far only "traditional" AV-products (which take "years" to scan, lots of ressources and are a pain in the ...). I understand that some don't understand that immediately (for example the fast scan of hash sums ).

But I would like to know why he/she (?) is so "angry" and what this is about really. - Is there any product you are favoring, claudiu? What are you fighting for here?

I was (!) fighting - long time ago - for LESS false positives ... if anybody does remember and see ... they worked on that (they had to after a certain result ) in the meantime (or maybe it is just because all my files are now known to the cloud and I do not install very much new ) ...

... but what is *your* beef exactly with WRSA? - Just being curious here. Not saying that you have one, it just feels this way.

Those awards of newspaper are a bit ... funny, right. I am with you on that. - But other than that? What is going on? - I just wonder, no insinuation meant!

 

I think Claudiu's issue is with Rubenking who stated in his article that WSA did a full scan upon installation. I said it was more likely it did a deep scan, which is more than adequate. It's just misunderstanding on Rubenking's part - an easy mistake to make. No need to drag it out and make a song & dance about it.

 

Well the same could be said about you sir!
What is your beef with avira?
~Off topic comment removed~
Reason im writing this post to you is because of the derogatory comments you made aimed at me earlier.This is a security forum and not a playground for verbal bullies like yourself.
Im welcoming your mature response to this with great and sincere anticipation.
Regards.

 

Beethoven, with all due respect, this is the Prevx/Webroot forum, and as such, shouldn't have posts containing issues one may have with competing products, unless WSA impacts or is impacted by them. Problems another user may have with another product should be referred to their own forums or the Other AV software forum here on Wilders.

 

Ahm .. you can read about it!? - I know you like typing more than reading but if you really interested just read what I wrote the last days (regarding avira).

But you just want to get back at me, right?

~Quote of edited post removed~

People here on this forum do know what I mean with "fighting". I hated all those false positives I had with Prevx and was angry about how that wasn't taken serious in the past. But that is the past. You can read all that if you want even now I guess. See. I have half the number of postings compared to you but are not only here half a year as you. - I do a lot more reading than writing, you should follow this example if you ask me.

That is what you think about me. And I couldn't care less. Since I wasn't censored I believe I was within the boundaries, right? - I just don't like clueless trolls that are telling BS about programs (without even testing!) that I know and care about. Simple as that. Don't do that and we won't have any problem.

Nice try, but I always say what I am thinking, whether you like it or not. So I asked the other user not you, didn't I? - And now back to WRSA and the award please.

 

Then I would say *here* is the wrong place to go on the barricades, right? - No, there has to be another reason else this would have been solved after 1 or 2 postings. But it isn't I guess. So I am asking what's going on.

 

Thank you for that reply.So glad you are an intellectual genius on the use of the modern computing system.
As for me well im just picking things up as i go here.This forum is a nice start.
Im not prejudiced at all but some of the things you come out with really get my back up,but nevermind that.

Glad we understand each other on this.
Best wishes to you.

 

Why normal threads on WSA are sistematically junked by few users posting irrelevant issues based on lack of understading of the software? Isn't it the time to have a break about WSA not scanning ALL files or leaving dormant files, WSA not performing well on certain on-demand scans or WSA underperforming under certain testing conditions.

It has been explained multiple times in different forums. Some of the issues are by design, for others there is still margin for improvements.

Please stop polluting any possible thread about the same questions. It is really annoying. A simple thread about an award derailed into off topic remarks and personal attacks...

 

@Beethoven1770 - You were way out of line with that foolish comment as regards country of origin, way out of line either in a forum or elsewhere - You start off with supposedly innocent questions yet soon show you have a hidden agenda, although your agenda has yet to be revealed -

My ATD system is flashing a red LED

 

Yes indeed you are correct it was indeed out of line and i sincerely apologise for any rudeness conveyed.

As for hidden agenda?.Of course not,What would be achieved by such a thing?
I do hope after this your ATD will be flashing a bright green.!
Regards to you.