What's up at PC Tools

I am starting to wonder what happened to the Threatfire team. I logged on to the PC Tools forums and saw a thread asking is Threatfire development finished: http://www.pctools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=65874

Djames account has been moved down to guess and the only person on the Threatfire forum answering questions is Achen. I wonder whats going on

 

When two mods go from active to vanished in less than a month, I'd say they quit, were let go, or, I have a feeling in this case, moved to another project. If that were to be true, it may be that time, where Threatfire either gets incorporated into another project or is tossed out. Just a suspicion though. It would be a shame because I had recently considered moving back to it.

 

Pure speculation on my part but remember who owns PC Tools. IMO, I have felt since the moment that Symantec bought them that they would skim off the top the best of PC Tools and the rest would fall by the wayside... Though I will also admit that so far, my theory has been wrong.

 

Symantec would be foolish if they did NOT incorporate Threatfire into the Norton Security Suite. TF is a top tier behavior blocker (BB) -- equal or better (IMO) than the built-in BBs of KIS, Avira, Twister, etc.

 

twister BB is going to be revamped in version 8 to be even stronger.

 

I don't mind if Symantec code's Threatfire into Norton AV/IS/360 but I would be disappointed if they stopped all dev of threatfire as a stand alone tool.

 

True enough, it's just going to be sad to have one less option that is both free AND not crippled in effectiveness. In fact, after Threatfire, I don't know of any that are left, or, at least suitable for use by those who don't have a computer degree to decipher the pop-up messages.

 

I have not been paying any attention to updates but someone just posted on there forum that it has been around 5 months since the last program update. With all the people complaining about issues that were promised to be fixed in the next release I thought they would have sent out a new version by now.

I wonder if this is the end of Threatfire

 

Yeah, some people mentioned that it's been months without updates, i was planning to try this (To replace PCTools Firewall Plus)

 

Refer here. Seems it is still being developed.

 

I have the Freeware version and it's been working fine for 12 months or more,
every day my F'wall notifies me that TF is updating, and then the TF balloon pops up to state TF is now uptodate. Works like a charm.

 

Sounds like this thread was read - lol.

 

PCTOOLS FIREWALL and THREAT FIRE are completely two different products from the same vendor. None can replace the other as far as i understand from this. maybe you wanted to say Supplement.

 

Or someone sent a PM to AChen

 

Either way, I'm glad it's still with us, even if it will soon be put into some other paid project.

 

Sorry but PC Tools Firewall has a HIPS component, I think it works similar to ThreatFire. However - I don't like PC Tools products, they slow down the system too much

 

PCTools by no means has a full-scope HIPS or behavior blocker. Instead, it has some patches & hooks that enable it to score well on Matousec's silly tests.

 

Well it seems like saying that Threatfire dev will continue on the PC Tools forum was not enough for some users. I do wonder if they fired Djames and Ebennett, it just so happened right near the end of the first quarter for 2010?

I think now AChen is the only active support team member on the forums. It's going to be interesting to see what Symantec does with PC Tools this year.

 

Forum activity doesn't necessarily equate to development. Could be a tightening of the budget, couple of staff being paid to assist members not on the payroll anymore, when one can manage.

But I agree, djames and ebennett were a valuable asset to have. Hopefully they come and posts here, about whatever, doesn't have to be pc tools related.

 

I was not trying to imply that forum activity = dev but Djames and Ebennett were both very good at handling Threatfire support, I find it odd that would get rid of them both and leave it down to one support staff on the forum.