prevx home page claims other AV's missed malware

I don't quite get the brouha about Prevx's website. While browsing through 5 pages here I opened a tab and checked the homepages of 7 other AV/AntiMalware products and found they all blow their own horns about their software. Hey they are trying to get customers. Many of them are very good at what they do, as is Prevx. As has been said here many times, Try them before you buy then and use what works good for you...

 

Always the same. Companies start to make strange charts and leave out important competitors or other relevant data. Seems those companies ran out of better arguments to convice customers buying their product?

Thank god my job is to make detections and not to "produce" charts.

 

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=243498&page=7

Go to the post by nosirrah and read it. Even though he is referring to something else, in his explaination he hits on something relevent to this thread; and thats how an av that does well in tests can fail a user in the real world. I think that is the part of the point PrevxHelp is making. In their chart they are seeing active infections from products that have done very well in testing. In the end what's it matter its just a chart anyway?

 

I missed this portion of your post before so I thought I'd clarify what I meant Before being bought out by Symantec, Threatfire had this chart:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071102080141/http://www.threatfire.com/

See the difference?

The Threatfire test may indeed have been conducted in a scientific manner by a third party, but they have recently doctored the results to benefit themselves.

One of the core reasons behind not interpreting the vendor data on our homepage further is so that we don't obscure anything - we give the raw data and there really isn't anything to argue with once you have that.

 

@vlk: is it this one -> http://www.prevx.com/filenames/X1188528126574293895-X1/ETHPDRV.SYS.html

btw, its not true that Prevx counts only active infections (like some users claimed here). it does count also "dormant" files and traces as misses.

 

Dormant files only existing in system folders and in areas which can be easily executed (i.e. the desktop). Traces like registry entries and shortcuts and non-executable files are not counted as a miss.

 

but files with *.VIR, *.FNE, *.TMP, etc. are counted..

 

We don't look at the file extension, just the file contents, as a file can still be loaded in any number of ways even if the extension is not executable by default. The filename shown in the page with an extension of .vir is probably just an artifact of a file having many names associated with it all pointing back to the same unique file.

However, if you right click and scan a folder with 5,000 .vir files, we won't report those into the chart.

 

i know, what i try to say is that an AV could have already renamed the file extension that you still count as miss... (in other words: there are so many possible variables that make the chart "not very reliable").

P.S.: FP -> http://www.prevx.com/filenames/X41038405478808615-X1/KAVPASSPORT.DLL.html

 

I checked through every filename missed by Avast (picked a random vendor) and they have 7 .VIR named files which we found out of 8567, so 0.08% of the files may have been renamed.

I'm willing to live within this range

 

PrevxHelp, repetition is a signal that a topic is (a) important and (b) unanswered, in my opinion.

PrevxHelp, to be precise, Prevx doesn’t actually give the “raw data”: neither the individual “missed threats” records for a single day, nor the number of PCs corresponding to each vendor’s “missed threats” statistics, nor the actual false positive rate for Prevx, nor the number of website visitors to the “Explain this chart” webpage versus the Prevx home webpage (at least so far). There hasn’t been much “data giving” to-date, unfortunately.

 

Pleonasm, repetition is a signal that a topic is (a) not as important to others as it is to you and (b) overanswered, in my opinion.

 

Hi @all!
Sry but I don´t understand the whole excitement over these graphs, too.

Every business company has it´s own marketing strategy. Please take a closer look at all these phrases written on the boxes or websites of other av-companies. Why don´t you discuss about these ones? I don´t get the point. Why is Prevx particularly criticized?
And it´s overanswered, indeed!

Regards,
Nightwatch

 

I completely agree, this the crux of the debate, they are publishing data that right or wrong doesn't come from independent organizations. Boasting about awards, is the only way to correctly advertise your product.

 

I'm starting to see the reason

 

People are bored and want something to argue about I guess. It seems to happen every 2-3 months here.

 

So you think that people are just mobbing PREVX because they finally revealed the truth of the matter? People see the whole thing under their own perspective and only time will tell if their vile "strategy" will pay off in terms of sales. Considering how this thread is progressing I wouldn't take it as a good omen for PREVX.

 

Is there a free version of Prevx besides the 30 day trial version?

 

xMarkx

You thining of jumping ship ? lol

 

hi,

Like some users i have already poited out in this thread https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=240920 the absence of deontologya of theses charts that might be considered as comparative tests by the average users PrevX web site visitor.
Since there is no clear disclaimer, i maintain that this here a dishonest marketing.
And if i really wish to be as dirty as Sentenza i will for instance:
1/ buy a license, take a lawyer that will study the Eula, and find the way to begin a class action.
2/ buy a license and prove:
-that some av detect malwares that PrevX has missed,
-how PrevX scanner engine can be easily defeated and evaded by using various methods, some perhaps unknown from the developers...
But i have other things to do than these kidding games (even serious, i am here for the fun).
Another thing to add in the "bad list":
When an user install the trial version, he is involved automatically in the community without a clear disclamer as in the past: this is here Fist F..K..G user's privacy.
And due to the number of FPs, the user is incited to buy a license in order to cure an infection that has never existed...MAGIC!
I already love the PrevX marketing mantra ("we detect ...missed"), but here the marketing is really genious! I suggest for those who have time to scan a fresh install of Windows, maybe PrevX will detect something that Microsoft has missed....

On the other hand i understand PrevX dev. team frustration: they have worked hard for releasing an effective product, and they wish legitimately to see their product being considered as good as any AV leader.
But i am sure that this wish can not be realized by av comparative testing: av testing is already an equation quite impossible to resolve, and the in the cloud approach makes it much more impossible to resolve...
The security soft industry is a highly competitive market which has never been a catholic world: the av industry has been selling placebo products deliberately (they know that black list is a dead end concept) since years, helped by fully corrupted av test organization (VB 100)...
Finally, even vicious, pretentious and quite dishonest, i see nothing scandalous in PrevX which is just a company with an aggressive marketing as thousands and thousands in the software market.
At least anyone is free to use it or not, as i have not seen a computer sold with an installed trial version of PrevX, as it is the case for most av...
Some organization provides single test reviews with a financial participation, AV-Comparative for instance, but not done for profit goals, and much more worse, CascadianLabs
( http://cascadialabs.com/index.html ): it's up to PrevX to sign a big check to Cascadian Labs and they will tell us how wonderful life is when using PrevX...
If PrevXhelp is interested, i can give by PM a contact of a french lab that belongs to a military department, and that sometimes provides technical AV tests published in a System Engineer confidential publication.

Any editor tries to push up its product in order to sell more and more licenses, and ethical corruption has never been an obstacle to this business religion.
More than in the cloud statistics or av comparative tests, the key for becoming a or THE leader has been showed by Symantec: trade-marketing and partnerships with PC manufacturers: Norton is the leader in France, not because it is the most effective av, not because it performs very well in av tests...NO...Norton is the leader because 25% or 35% of users have their first av experience with it...
In a few words, it is a question of cash flow: "to have or to have not"...

rgds

 

As the OP, I asked because at work I have been investigating prevx for an additional layer. When I first visited prevx's site, my initial response from the graph was mixed. On one hand, they are blasting other AV's in a self righteous way when they suffer from same problems. However, they do point out that AV's miss malware and that no single product will protect the user 100% of the time.

We have purchased prevx for a number of PC's and will see how it goes.

On a sidenote, our IT infrastructure uses fortigate and it blocks the downloading of prevx due to classifying it as malware.

Hawk

 

Virus Bulletin's results seem to be rather dubious if this is anything to go by.

 

Prevx has an unlimited trial version which can detect but can't remove malware.

 

Apparently that's already happened.

 

Oh!? Yaah!...I just told five of my friends to buy Prevx if they want good protection for their PCs.