prevx home page claims other AV's missed malware

I'm Sorry Could not stay away from this one....


Im sorry but every time you say FIXED is another user that thought they were infected when they used your product do you have any idea how many systems you guys screwed up all because of this.

I know other AV's have FP's there no doubt but this kind of marketing and then the stuff its detecting is very misleading. The main reasion other AV's are missing what your detecting is becuse there was no virus on there system in the first place, until they installed your product and it became the virus.

 

Yes, it is true that some users may not be inclined to read further, assuming they have understood the meaning of the chart.

Being that the chart has the title: "Threats missed by other security vendors" and the caption "The chart below shows how many infections Prevx 3.0 found yesterday, on PCs protected by security products from the following vendors:" I'd assume that anyone who didn't fully understand the chart from the captions alone would click "Explain this chart".

We've turned on some web analytics to see just how often people click "Explain this chart" and should have some statistically significant results in a few hours.

 

I disagree - far less than 1% of our users have ever experienced a FP. This is completely within the range of normal AVs - you may hear the users complaining on a forum saying: "Prevx has too many FPs!!" but that is just because they were one of the few which encountered them. In some of my own small testing Prevx against other AVs for compatibility, I have yet to find an AV (out of 6) which did NOT find a FP on one of my average-user test systems. One notable case was of a particular AV finding 29 Photoshop files as malicious Last I checked, memory hogging software doesn't mean malicious

Feel free to add a 5%, or even a 10% bias to the numbers on the homepage - the actual numbers really don't matter much at all, just the fact that the AVs are missing real threats and we can prove it.

 

Users.

We do not have this data easily available but I will see if we can generate these reports easily.

Thank you

Probably not, being that it would then be illogical (explaining a chart you have yet to encounter).

As a compromise, we've now changed the line to read:

"These statistics are provided to show that all vendors miss threats and cannot be interpreted to compare the effectiveness of one product to another."

 

Or one of the few that figured out how to use the forum or even knew you had one.

The only thing you can prove is how shady your marketing is and how misleading your charts are.


I'm done talking to someone with there head stuck in the mud thinking all is fine. As its pointless to talk to someone that's preaching his own gospel.

 

To be fair, you can't deny that the FPs are still coming in a straight, steady flood, can you? I've yet to see a FP from the AVs that I use really - completely serious. NOD32 had FPs - I stopped using it as it caused troubles.

 

What exactly is misleading about that statement?

 

@Prevxhelp:
You could state something like this (just an idea):

Yesterday 1000000 PC's were scanned with Prevx. From those, almost all had an installed and running AV (from various vendors). Prevx found suspected malicious files on 8000 of those PC's (see missed files here).
<here you put a graph showing 8000 from 1000000>
This should make you clear that no AV is able to protect against 100% of all malware and that an(y) additional product like PREVX may be able to detect malware that your current AV has overseen.
Disclaimer: our product, like other products, may also report false alarms.

This would support your scope (tell that no AV detects 100%) and could not be interpreted by anyone as misleading.

 

They are coming steadily for us and for every other AV because there are new threats and new legitimate programs created every day. We receive data on more than 250,000 brand new programs every day.

Most of the FPs reported here are on security software or new OS builds and if you look through the historic list of FPs reported in the "Introducing" thread, there actually are not a lot which are on software used by normal users every day (granted every AV's goal is to have 0 FPs, but this is logically unattainable).

Oddly enough, we have only a marginal amount more FPs come into our support inbox every day as we have here, even though we have many more users who actually contact us in customer support than on here (and a much larger user base behind the customer support inbox), which shows that our FPs tend to occur from more "techie" users who are more likely to use alpha/beta software than your average home user.

 

Or more likely able to see its a FP unlike a normal user that just clicks remove.

 

I agree that these statistics would be good to have, except that this is almost exactly what we had before. Our charts included data like (from a while back):

"
* Users:1,383,025
* Scans:3,603,248
* Files Checked:11,345,488,205
* Bad Files:1,332,640
* PCs Infected:34%
"
However, the percent of PCs infected is highly skewed because people come looking for Prevx because they suspect their PC is infected (and now the statistics are higher as well) so showing these numbers causes people to claim we're spreading FUD.

We're definitely interested in a solution to this, however

 

Our system is able to find the number of unique instances of a program across the community. If any signature could result in a file being determined which exists on more than 100 PCs, we are immediately given a warning and manual intervention is required. Therefore, we're able to prevent any major FPs from happening so I this is why most normal users, who are using software used by a majority of normal users (Word, Powerpoint, Adobe Reader, etc.) would rarely see any FPs at all.

 

hm, then i suggest removing it completely. that will also avoid any complaints

 

Misleading marketing and advertising practices

The statement from malwarebytes is no different to the statements made by prevx.

At least very similar

Yes their products do that, but so do other AV's

On the other hand this marketing statement by Comodo is outright deception

Comodo Internet Security has all the functionality of a paid AV without the price. It eliminates ALL known Viruses, Worms and Trojans from desktops and networks with no license fees or hidden costs.

Don't get me wrong, they're all great products. Personally I don't give a damn for advertising or their marketing strategies .
If they deliver I buy If the don't then I don't...

 

PrevxHelp, I do like the empirical approach, and look forwarding to seeing the total number of visits to the Prevx home webpage and the number of visits to the “Explain this chart” section during the same period. I recommend that you wait a full 24 hours, to ensure that a sample across the globe is captured.

PrevxHelp, thank you for your willingness to be transparent. Again, the request is for a simple spreadsheet containing 12 rows (for each security vendor) and three columns: the security vendor’s name, the number of “missed threats,” and the count of the number of PCs upon which the former is based.

PrevxHelp, not sure that I understand the logic. The chart is displayed in its entirety on the home webpage with a partial explanation of its contents (“The chart below shows how many infections Prevx 3.0 found yesterday, on PCs protected by security products from the following vendors”). Why couldn’t the new clarifying statement be added immediately thereafter?

PrevxHelp, that’s another step in the right direction!

PrevxHelp, why not simply inform the forum community about (a) the total number of malware instances detected by Prevx and (b) the total number of detected malware instances that were incorrectly classified as malware, over (c) the same historical time period? The ratio of “b” to “a” is the false positive rate. I have to believe that someone inside of Prevx is monitoring that key performance indicator closely, and sharing the “a,” “b” and “c” information will advance the discussion from “opinion” to “fact.”

 

IBK, there is considerable merit in the idea. Prevx could, in its place, publish a quarterly document similar to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report, which is highly professional presentation of issues that are of interest to the broad user community. Such a report – unlike the single “missed threats” graph on the Prevx home webpage – could contain additional analyses and details that might help to alleviate misinterpretation. A link to the report – rather than the display of the “missed threats” graph – could appear on the Prevx home webpage.

PrevxHelp, what do you think of this recommendation?

 

What is all this nonsense?
I really do not understand those that are complaining about PrevX advertising (and I am not one of their customers).
Kaspersky, Eset use similar misleading charts http://www.eset.com/products/compare-NOD32-vs-competition.php?pm=1 http://www.kaspersky.com/comparative_tests?id=207575621
Norton has a list of awards http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme.jsp?themeid=awards for their publicity.
Firewall companies (comodo,agnitum,tallemu,jetico,etc.) use (or used in the past) matousec tests as advertising.

And I never saw, much complaints about those advertisments.

Panagiotis

 

For PrevxHelp,

You may have answered this already but does Prevx notify the other AV/AM companies to let them know what they missed?

 

It's what they do. A few do an admirable job at it. That is to say, they mask their chronic complaining in a cloak of studiousness. The great majority of these complaining types are nothing more than electronic vampires... navel contemplaters who get all wrapped up in themselves and their mini-causes. Recognize them for who and what they are: people who take themselves too seriously. They have no stake in your computer's security.

 

What? Do you really think that the statistics made by the vendor itself is not biased at all and you compare it to tests performed by prestigious testing organizations, such as Virus Bulleting or av-comparatives The statistics that doesn't take into account if the AVs are up to date and running properly, if more data is gathered from systems with more famous AVs installed or if the files detected by the product in question are actually functional malicious files... I'm speechless, sorry.

 

This forum is full of very intelligent people!!!

Fortunately, I still find some that really think a bit and care about the things, and is a pleasure to talk with them...

 

Gotta agree with pandlouk. If people believe in this that strongly, then they need to hold all vendors/companies to the same standard. If this is the case, I would expect to see several new threads started about other companies PR/marketing practices.

 

We do if they request information about the samples.

Unfortunately we are unable to easily generate this data in a reasonable/economically sound amount of time. We have made various web changes due to the suggestions by the members here but there is a limit to our openness and we have to put the good of our userbase ahead of the requests of an individual.

I suspect regardless of how much I support our views, there will always be people completely against our vendor charts, and then there will always be the other 99+% who are indifferent or thankful of our data

These are very busy times for Prevx - filled with building intricate new components into our engines and improving the usability and impact of our products. While we are interested in any input which can help us improve our offerings, it would be a better use of everyone's time, in my opinion, to focus discussions away from topics that are frequently rehashed unnecessarily

This thread is largely a repeat of what was posted into the "Introducing" thread in the "other anti-malware software" sub-forum, which is a repeat of what was posted into another thread in that sub-forum, which is answering questions which have been posted and reposted periodically since we started putting the vendor information on our website in 2007 We're always interested in new opinions/viewpoints on this data, but most of the points discussed in this thread have already been made previously in other discussions (or within this thread itself ).

Please let me know if you do have any questions/comments, but I think it would be more effective to forward direct requests for web changes into our customer service inbox where our web team will consider any suggestion.

 

Dear Marcos,

with all the respect, it was not an attack versus Eset or any other company.

But since you want bring av-comparatives as an example where exactly is Avira, Microsoft and GData on the chart you display here (May 2009 proactive test)http://www.eset.com/products/compare_heuristic_detection.php ?
Or is it not misleading, by selective using only the data that makes Eset look better?

regards,
Panagiotis

 

*crickets*