Prevx 3.0: PC Magazine Review

Nor did they mention the fact that if you download and run malware to a virtual drive with the free version, then reboot so the drive is reset, it will keep spamming you to buy the product to clean it every reboot even though the file no longer exists the in the specified directory! Tss!

 

Wow,PCMAG must throw a party since this must be their first review not being bashed up here....
even i don't know why? maybe it confers to liking of people here.
I have always found their reviews fair and dependab;e........
Disclaimer:I am not working for PCMag or their affiliates....

 

"Right now" being until you change your set up again.

 

I know the product has improved dramatically, and there are a lot of staff working at prevx, but one guy, to me, deserves a huge chunk of the credit.

And that's Joe (PrevxHelp). His assistance and overall professionalism are 10/10. His service and the product are the reason many are trialling, buying and recommending prevx.

Note - the other staff (Eraser, Web Designer etc) are great too.

 

The product and the company that produces it are top notch. There is no BS and a lot of support is offered to customers. A big

 

Isnt that the whole point. Up to now, it has been Joe and Marcos along with PWD, working to present this product from its birthing. They did it in a way that was receptive to constructive feedback and made you honestly feel you had a hand in its development. Which most did.

Now the product has been tested at Malware.Com and PC Mag. Are they the cream of the crop? Who knows and who really is. But it is the start of legitimate proof that this product does what it says. And with what they have planned, it will look vastly different probaly this time next year. They approached this in a prefect way to make it a sucess. And in the end, it was a win-win situation for all.

 

Indeed, the forum support is like a premium service.

 

Hello all,
Thank you very much for your kind words and continued support As trjam has said, we appreciate all forms of input and we honestly consider every suggestion made. We're constantly upgrading our products and introducing new technologies behind the scenes, but in a year's time, Prevx will indeed most likely not look anything like it does today because threats won't look anything like they do today. Being dynamic is how we have been able to cope with the new threats and with the changes we are currently working on, we will be able to continue to push the line further. Although the PC Magazine review only showed a small % improvement over standard AVs, that's because the sample set was extremely small just because of the constraints in resources to actually put all of the products through the tests.

I know many people have asked for third party reviews in the past, so I thought it might be useful mentioning another accreditation which we have received from the analyst group Gartner in case no one has come across it yet: http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/newsindex.shtml?/cgi/news/release?id=256969

Thank you again for all of your interest - as always, let me know if you have any questions

 

Just so I know, where exactly is a good place to get support with my 2 issues? I'd rather not spam this thread anymore

 

Feel free to message me via PM or use the "Introducing" thread, but for a quick answer: a virtual re-setting drive is a bit of a non-standard situation and it should return back to a "Secure" status if you run another scan showing that the malware is gone once the drive is reset and regarding ObjectDock - we've seen this as well and are going to make the scanning dialog movable/customizable so that you can put it somewhere else

 

Agreed!!

 

Hi. I have run many tests on Prevx, Avira, A2, MBAM, Comodo, F-Secure, etc over the last 3-4 months.

These have been on systems with live malware infections (all malware < 3 days old, with between 4-8 live infections on the system), Live infected system tests with older malware (some of which is old and may not be in the wild) and on demand tests with samples of up to 1000 current and old malware.

My findings have been that A2 and Avira are consistantly very good at catching new malware and will probably get 99-100% of older stuff. These two are by far and away better than any other signature based AMs.

Prevx is very good at detecting new malware as well and has, on occasion, with some samples, beaten A2 and Avira by some significant margin (particuarly on live infections). This said however, ot is not as consistant as A2 and Avira. Sometimes it catches fewer nasties. Overall, Prevx seems to be getting better at catching new malware. Which is the best at catching new malware? - cant say at the moment. A2 and Avira are more reliable possible, but I think its technology like Prevx that will serve us better in the future.

Overall A2 and Avira beat Prevx and everything else - based on large samples - including some which are very old. What does this mean? I feel A2 and Avira will detect anything sent to them. Prevx only detects what is a real threat. Joe confirmed this with one of my old samples - some of the sample were exploits that dont work as MS has patched them, some were hardly malware at all - slightly risky batch files etc. Prev can tell how many times these have been seen in reality by their 5 million users - some of my zero daay samples were seen by me and one other (probably joe!) - so went missed. If these had been seeen my a few more, Prevx would have found them.

On my system, I have Prevx and Zemana. I haave run literally THOUSANDS of new malware samples on my system and none of them have ever passed Prevx and Zemana. Zemana has got everything Prevx missed.

If you were to ask me which is the single best AM at the moment - the answer would be Avira, followed by A2. The level of malware out there is going through the roof and most of it is behaving differently now so not so obvious its infected a system. My money would be on Prevx as being the best option for the future, for real world protection.

 

Thanks, an informative post at last. I also think that this new "in the cloud" technology is the future, hopefully the near future, meaning that we should be able to connect to the internet anywhere. All of the infections that I have experienced in the last 3 years (more than 100, caught by Nod32 first, and Avira now) were exclusively introduced by USB flash drives plugged into my laptops when disconnected from the internet. It is true though that most computers are always connected to internet when operational.

 

Re: Prevx 3.0 & Prevx Edge

OK, I'll ask.

About a month ago, I first heard of Prevx.
I have the following questions at this time.

1. How do programs get chosen for inclusion in your database?

2. How long after a program is listed as "CURRENTLY BEING REVIEWED" is a determination made as to whether the program is actually malware?

3. How do you determine whether a program is malware?

4. Do you try to contact, if known, the program's author?

 

Re: Prevx 3.0 & Prevx Edge

Hello
1) Our goal is to classify every file in every program. We add > 250,000 new programs a day automatically from our users.

2) The results on the filenames pages are inexact as they only come by filename. For example, there are many infections with the name "svchost.exe" but that name is also shared with the legitimate Windows component. The time it takes to certify that a program is legitimate is much longer than the time it takes to detect it as malicious (the latter is normally a matter of hours, depending on how widespread the program is).

3) We collect behavioral data using Prevx 3.0 on the user's PC which allows us to classify the program and determine its intent. If that isn't enough, we have an extensive server-side sandboxing system which determines tens of thousands of new executables every day as malicious or clean.

4) We generally will not contact the program's author because (no offense intended) the author can't be trusted Malware Incorporated is always looking to throw us off the trail of a new infection so we tend not to trust the companies that suspicious programs supposedly come from Digital signatures do help to alleviate these concerns but many suspicious programs contain nothing more than standard version data which can't be trusted.

Hope that helps!

 

Hi

I´ve got one question regarding the settings "Apply before / Apply after Age/Popularity detection".
Which one shall I choose to reach maximum protection? I´m not afraid about any false positives. All three heuristic level were set to maximum.

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Nightwatch

 

The default setting of "Apply before" improves detection. This says that regardless of the age of the file, Prevx should apply the additional heuristics. "Apply after", however, says that only relatively new files (based on the slider bars below) should have heuristics applied to them. Let me know if you want any further clarification!

 

Hi!
Thanks a lot for your fast response!
I´m using Prevx 3.0 since 4 days now. It´s a very impressive and light software offering strong detection rates and excellent removal instructions. Well done!!

There´s only one thing I would like to know: Is Prevx (full version) able to detect pdf-exploits while exploiting the application?

Regards,
Nightwatch

 

Thanks!

Yes it is, however, they're constantly updating the infections and techniques but we're rolling out new technology soon behind-the-scenes which will block them easier using smarter proactive methods

 

Fine! Thanks again !

Keep up the good work

Best regards,
Nightwatch

 

@PrevxHelp

I probably asked this question before, but it bothers me...

Does Prevx still detect malware even if your PC is Offline?
Or do you have to stay connected to the Internet to be protected?

 

The chance of getting infected with new threats is significantly reduced when offline, unless you install malware via manually inserting a USB key. Prevx blocks known threats (ones you've encountered before) and mutations of them but to block new threats you do need to be online... for now We are adding adding functionality to block malware when offline/clean a system from a boot disk via a miniature copy of our database and we're adding functionality to heuristically block USB infections.

 

I never trust PCMag's reviews.
Not as comprehensive as the other comparative reviews, like AV-Comparatives.com.


@PrevxHelp

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Will this be in the next release along with Secure Browsing/Sandboxing?
And how far are we away from the next release now

 

Patience. Let them get it right before leaking it out. My question is how Marcos is going keep his promise if he cant keep it small. But seriously, it is really nice to find one light app that works and secures my surfing habits enough to not have to worry about this stuff. I really like Prevx and really encourage others to give it a shot. It is all I use, last week, this week, and next week.