Next best alternative to ThreatFire (Symantec to Acquire PC Tools)

Not possible, if they keep buying companies which make good alternatives to their products.

 

PC TOOLS,Show Me the Money.Symantec$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ PC TOOLS

 

My free firewall recommendation is Rising. It has become my new favorite FW.

 

well, the more we boycott the less money they have, the less they buy.

 

I like my Norton. I had too many problems with PCT Internet Suite and Norton is free with AT&T DSL.

 

Even if all the members of Wilders boycott Symantec, they would still make a lot of money. They have contracts with big corporations, so even if they don't make as much money in the consumer sector they'd still have streams of revenue coming in.

 

Oh they have the resources, I think I read that they are up to 56 companies bought and turn over is nearly $6billion.

 

A Light In The Dark At The End Of This Tunnel!

Consider this friends, especially those who are incensed by this gobbling up another program by the behemoth bloat-happy and issue-pagued Symantec.

This now throws wide-open the doors for the other developers and their products to draw in even more customers. Not only that but perhaps just maybe some new makers.

Just a little something on a more positive note (if any) to take into consideration after this.

EASTER

 

Not necessarily, if we boycott Symantec and say start using apps of say ACME Security Inc.
Symantec will buyout ACME and again, we will be back to the same situation.

 

If u can`t beat them - eat them

 

very nice move from symantec. they should dissolve PC tools Product including TF. all PC tools products are low level programs. specially TF lot's of false positve. YEHEY!!!

 

Novatix before they transferred over to PCTools seemed almost prime time in spite of off-the-wall FP's for notepad & IE that i experienced.

Looking back now, and implimenting early CyberHawk versions, they certainly were on the right track but somewhere along the line of developments, i can only speculate that they changed programmers, and thats when users began noticing more issues then before. If that was indeed the case, i dunno.

I do know their early versions still work to expectations for particular guards, especially i noticed DLL injections are an absolute bait CyberHawk jumps on with authority and TERMINATES (with the proper answer of course). This i tested with dll injector, jumper, etc.

This Behavioral Blocker IMO started to fall short when they added that 4th driver instead of the early 3 drivers that are still stable and accurate to this very day. Apparently their mass of dll's have done alright early on and maybe even thereafterwards, but i have always suspected a driver problem in that one additional driver added after several early versions and the complaints back then seemed to confirm it.

Now Symantec is in charge of it's programming, it's a matter of time before those reports begin to pour into these forums if it's become improved or just dismissed or worse yet bloated full of system instability problems.

Just my opinion from following closely this app since it's very first introduction to now, EASTER

 

So now instead of saying Spyware Doctor sucks I'll say Symantec Anti-Spyware Sucks. Great.

For the Threatfire alternative, I'd say Mamutu is worth a try. Too bad it isn't free.

 

Maybe I am just lucky but TF has never had a lot of false positives on my computers.

 

The last time I checked (couple of days ago) there was a 20% discount on Mamutu at HERE.

Also, Emsisoft has just now established a special discount as follows...

As for Mamutu -- it is a great behavior blocker, stable, & fairly light. Mamutu is installed without requiring a restart, so you can easily trial it using such as Returnil, Deepfreeze, Shadowuser, et alia. {By the way, I am NOT a Mamutu shill -- just a satisfied user.}

Set the slide for sensitivity level to a lower number to reduce FPs.

By the way, an alert by a behavior blocker is not (strictly speaking) an "FP" as such. Why? Because (as the name implies) a behavior blocker monitors processes for *behaviors* that are typical of those actions taken by malware. When an alert pops up, it means that a potentially dangerous behavior ACTUALLY IS being attempted by the process listed in the alert. If that dangerous behavior is being attempted by a malware, the user smiles & feels protected. If that dangerous behavior is being attempted by a NON-malware application, then the user gets tight jaws.

For instance -- most keyloggers want to "hook" the user's keyboard inputs. Thus, doing that sort of thing constitutes a suspicious behavior that is typical of keyloggers. However, there are many NON-keylogger programs that monitor keyboard inputs for perfectly legitimate reasons. My launcher "Runit" does exactly that, because it constantly watches for the particular key combinations that mean I want its launch menu to pop up. This example, by the way, explains why behavior blockers have a bit of a difficult time protecting against keyloggers. Namely, the behavior of nasty keyloggers is quite typical of a fairly large number of NON-malware apps. Thus, if the behavior blocker monitors for keylogger behavior, it could give a lot of FPs. If it does NOT monitor those behaviors, it will have fewer FPs but it will also be less effective in alerting the user to keyloggers.

At the present state of security software technology, it is GENERALLY true that the more effective a security app is in detecting zero-day malware, the more FPs it may generate. The fewer the FPs, the greater the likelihood that a zero-day threat will slip through.

Security apps are developing better & better algorithms & AI to combat the trade-off between reducing FPs & (at the same time) increasing effectiveness of protection. One approach is to use a combo of blacklists and communities/whitelists to "review" any bad behavior spotted by a behavior blocker. For instance, TF uses the PCTools antivirus as well as a community database. I *assume* that, upon detecting "bad behavior" TF consults the community database to see if the process is an "okay one" & also consults the AV's signatures to see if there is a confirming sig that the process is, indeed, a nasty.

Concerning whitelists, Regis Philbin might ask: Is that the *final answer*?" Some say yes. Some say no.

Of course, the bad guys are not sitting still either. Every day there is a new type of threat or exploit. It's a giant chess match between evil & good, black & white, them & us.

 

Mabutu?

 

Mamutu.

 

The members of Wilders total isn't anywhere close to 1% of the customer base Symantec has. You could have half a million people quit using Symantec and they'd still be raking in MILLIONS if it dropped below a billion, so no, boycotting wouldn't even make Symantec produce a mere drop of sweat, nevermind make them nervous. Personally I think they should just re-brand and re-design Threatfire. Yes, it will likely stop being free, but they IMHO have a way of making things simple for the common folks, who are a hell of a lot more important to them than the techies found here.

They don't make their money off the "experienced" among us, they make their money off the "Wow, this Consumer Reports article said Norton was dandy, I think I'll use that...now, where was I?...Oh yes, here's the power button"-type people. I personally, if you have even a somewhat recent system, think the bloat argument is getting old and irrelevant, so I don't even pay attention to the people who use that as a reason to hate on a company.

 

Thanks for pointing out my typo. I have fixed it.

By the way, quoting the entirety of a long thread such as mine isn't necessary in order to show my typos. It wastes a lot of space. Just edit the quote to show only the parts that you are discussing. No offense, Coolio - just a suggestion. Peace & good-will to you.

 

A-Squared anti-malware uses a version of Mamutu? I'm using the beta version of A-Squared with the new antivirus module.

I used Cyberhawk in the past and I thought the first versions were rather heavy on my system. I would say the last version of Cyberhawk was probably the best, but I never had any real malware alerts with that or TF.

 

Mamutu is part of A-Squared anti-malware. The stand-alone Mamutu was developed for those who want a behavior blocker ONLY. By the way, the AV module of A-squared is Ikarus, a top-tier AV. Nice combo! Please keep the rest of us Wilders folks posted as to how you like the beta. I'm not interested in running a beta right now, but I do like to try & keep informed.

 

Hi fellows

I know this topic is more changed gears toward the direction of TF's acqusition, moreover Symantec's buyout of ThreatFire or technically PCTools which is been a controlling distributor of it after acquiring it from Novatix.

Does anyone know if Novatix possibly pulled out from PCTools shortly before this takeover or if they are still staffing the programming of ThreatFire or not?

This is all a little confusing to some of us because most peeps are anticipating the worse, but all things being equal for the time being, can anyone who is currently satisfied and using TF offer some positives on TF at this point or it's last version, free i assume?

Thanks EASTER

 

I'm not a user of PCTools firewall, ThreatFire, or any other of the products now owned by Symantec. That said, it always amazes me when I see people dumping products they like whenever a big company buys them out. Even if Symantec completely ruins every new version of PCTools apps, that doesn't affect the copy you now have. It'll be the same tomorrow and next year as it is right now. About all you'd need to do is kill any auto-updating it may have. If the auto-updating can't be disabled, block the update sites with the hosts file, or even in your router if it has a place to list blocked sites.

If you like the software and it's not something that requires constant updating by design (like an AV), use it. If the app is a reliable finished product, not a beta or something with unfixed bugs, vendor support isn't that important. Symantec killed Sygate but it's still a good firewall. Kerio 2 hasn't been supported in years, but it's still very good. If you like PCTools, keep using the version you have. If you don't, now you have more reasons to switch.

 

I have to agree with noone_particular, if your current copy is been useful and satisfactory, don't kill it off just to spite Symantec's hostile takeovers. If it still works, do as the above member suggests and block away the updates although it's been my experience apps that have changed ownership before, normally or let's says most of the time, kill the update server anyway, but play it safe because who knows what they will do with users of the current past versions.

On another note, i visit regularly computer repair shops in my area and i've yet to meet any of their owners or staff who would give a nod to Symantec's prizes. In fact just today my local shop owner said customers experiencing issues that needed attention fron their shops with Norton's completely updated, said it found nothing, but after installing Trend Micro Internet Security, the malware on those machines became evident. He says he always suggests that brand to his customers and receives negative return complaints after installing it. I dunno, since AV's i prefer are Kaspersky2009 & Nod32. I always suggest an AV that has the best file cleaning ratings as well as capture rate. But since i'm a HIPS man, i don't even bother with them, neither do any of my closest associates who discovered more reliable front-line security rests with Sandboxes, Virtual Systems, and the like.

EASTER Tropical Storm Waves Gathering Near