Kaspersky should i buy it or stick with AVS

As i have AVS as my antivirus sheild/scanner, is it really worth my while buying Kaspersky 6??

What would i gain from the free AVS.
With AVS being version 6.0.0.308 is it likely to compromise my system anymore than from using the latest version of Kaspersky.
Thank you

 

the Kaspersky component of AVS, whilst good, will never be up to the level is KAV 6. It would not make sense for Kaspersky to provide the same functionality to third parties as it does within the product that it retails itself.

The AVS version lacks, I believe, the Proactive Defense MOdule that KAV 6 has and I think that having this element is worth the cost alone. They may be more elements of KAV 6 that are not in the AVS version. Also v7 of KAV is currently in beta...which is going very well. This new version will have advanced heuristic technology which I doubt will filter down to AVS for a while.

I am sure that you can find KAV at a reasonable price on the web (not that the asking price is unreasonable for the fucntionality provided IMHO.

Why not also ask the question at the Kaspersky Lab forum that you can get to via this link:

http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showforum=4

Hope that helps?

 

Secunia listed some security concerns with pre .614 builds of Kaspersky, therefore AVS should be affected. Supposedly AOL is going to release an updated version that will also be Vista compatible this month.

 

Add Cyberhawk Free with AVS and I think you'll be just fine. There is a new release of CH coming out soon and although I never had problems with the current version the new one should be even better.

 

I would keep AVS, but make sure you compliment it with a HIPS and or virtualization program.

If all you want from your AV is to detect and remove viruses, AVS will do just fine. If bells and whistles are important to you, purchase KAV.

 

I wouldn't use either. There is a very serious issue some have of file corruption if you use KAV and the really bad thing is that the corruption doesn't go away if you uninstall KAV. It is permanent. Kaspersky has refused to do anything about it. KAV 5 corrupted files (with unwanted ADS tags on every single file!) and it was an absolute nightmare to remove the corruption when KAV was uninstalled. It was only by screaming and yelling from many furious users that Kaspersky bothered to finally issue a tool to remove the crap they left attached to every single file on your computer.

KAV6 is even worse as the corruption is permanent. It doesn't happen supposedly to everyone...but I wonder about that. Even if it happens only to some do you want to risk that? I risked it ...stupid me...as I had KAV 5 very briefly so I knew how bad Kaspersky is when it comes to corrupting your files....but I still got KAV 6 and I am very sorry I did. There is no reason, whatsoever, for KAV to use techniques that corrupt your files. KAV thinks though that no one would buy their AV if they didn't use these methods because then KAV for full scanning of the computer would be very slow...but so what? Schedule the scan for during the night while you sleep. Plus, there is no need to do routine scans of the computer. A full scan should be done only if you suspect viruses are on the computer. So, there is no reason for KAV to risk this corruption of files of even just a small percentage of users computers.
Internet surfing, while using KAV, is not slow even when ISwift and IChecker are turned off....unless you have a slow computer or inadequate RAM. So, Kaspersky could easily solve this problem by simply doing away with ISwift and IChecker but they refuse and so every person using KAV runs the risk of having their files permanently corrupted. The corruption doesn't begin right away either so no one can know for sure that they will be one of the lucky ones with no corruption.

AVS runs the same risk. AVS is probably safe to use on 98SE computers as those are FAT32 and no one has reported the file corruption on that OS.

Kaspersky should have stopped with KAV 4.5 as that was the finest AV ever created but instead they went on to 5 and 6 which are not nearly as good as 4.5 which had no risk of file corruption (6) and no crap attached to every file that was almost impossible to remove (5). 4.5 caused absolutely no slow down on a decent computer...it did on old computers with inadequate RAM and CPU but so? You expect that sort of thing on old or newer, but cheaper, computers with inadequate RAM and CPU.

 

Could you please post where you got the information that Kavs ADS tag corruptes files. I would like to read it as everything I have read and my personal experience with Kav is that the ADS tags were just placed there to be used as a checksum and time stamp so it could speed up the scanning with an on demand scan. And just in case you didn't know, Microsoft Windows also places ADS tags on files. Thanks in advance for the link.


P.S.
I have removed The ADS tag many times and it is very easy with one of the apps made for this task. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=47855

 

Kaspersky was the only developer of information security solutions in the world whose products have successfully passed all Virus Bulletin tests in the past three and a half years but now a Kaspersky UPX vulnerability is revealed.
"Details of a flaw in UPX processing in the Kaspersky anti-virus engine have been made available, a month after the release of a patch to fix the problem." -Virus Bulletin;

 

Let's keep this in perspective. The vulnerability was reported to KL on Jan 24, 2007 and addressed by Feb 7, 2007, see here. Also, the vulnerability operationally locks the machine by placing it in an infinite loop - it's basically an unproductive vulnerability if you actually want to accomplish something. If you want to take systems offline, it gets you there.

Blue

 

This is a rather novel use of the term corruption. The files were not corrupted, their useability was unaffected from all reports that I'm aware of.

Was it a bonehead move by KL? Sure, there were some specific compatibility issues that it created, the ADS's were not dealt with on an uninstall of the product, you had to uninstall KAV to remove them, and KL was extremely slow in providing a tool to address their removal (on the other hand, other free tools were readily available to accomplish that).

Precisely what issue are you raising? The KAV causing chkdsk errors reports?

Could you explain precisely how iSwift and iChecker come into play here? As far as I know, they are a databasing approach that does not muck with the filesystem.

Blue

 

Thanks for the replies
I decided to give Kav a trial to see how it gets on.

I thought i may as well go for the full monty Kaspersky internet security.

So far i like what i see and it performs nicely on my computer with a suprisingly low system resource.
No slowdowns on the computer or web that i have noticed.

So far then this is what i now have installed.

Kis6
BOClean
Spyware Terminator (hips enabled)
Spywareblaster
K9

Is there any other recommendations to help protect or does this set up seem ok.
I have tried Cyberhawk and Crawler parental control, but both programs seemed to crash my computer quite often.

If there are any recommendations i would prefer free (funds are tight at the moment) and something that does not require a lot of configuration or user integration, as i have an 11 year old son who uses the computer quite often and although to date he has always tells me when something pops up on screen (as swt does quite often) i dont really want to have to rely on this method for when i am not at home as my wife is not computer savvy at all.

Thank you again

 

I'd let it work for a while before contemplating any changes. Too many changes at once make it a lot harder to trace the cause of problems if they do emerge.

Blue

 

More info on IChecker and IStreams technologies here:

http://www.kaspersky.com/faq?qid=156636746

and how to remove it:

http://www.kaspersky.com/faq?qid=170884737&qtype=3594740

 

Please note that IStreams and ISwift are different. IStreams used alternate date streams, ISwift uses object ID's, which is a file attribute on NTFS volumes and databases these in a separate file. At least that's my understanding.

Blue

 

Thank you for pointing this out, that was my understanding to..

IStreams - info saved on the file in a Stream, and works only on NTFS. And for that you can use Kl stream remover.exe. My understanding is that this has been replaced by ISwift which save this info in a file "fidbox"
IChecker - in a file called "sfdb.dat", and works on Fat32