AV-Comparatives Real World Protection Test - August 2018

Discussion in 'other anti-virus software' started by Thankful, Sep 17, 2018.

  1. bellgamin

    bellgamin Registered Member

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    guest, mekelek (post 47), Itman(post 50) -- Who are these "users" you are referring to? Have you taken some sort of poll or are you miraculously omniscient? Since the 3 of you have signed off on a thinly veiled insult to some nameless, faceless group of "users", please reveal the source of your data. Also... whatever does this sort of dissing have to do with the topic of this thread?
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2018
  2. ance

    ance formerly: fmon

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    I've tried a lof of antivirus products but it doesn't make sense to replace Windows Defender nowadays. It's just working and I really think most of the AV companies will disappear in the next years. :blink:
     
  3. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    Good riddance to those system hogs although a few choice one's did serve a good purpose and nothing was out there like is come along with Windows Defender. Add some third party NON-LICENSE security apps with solid reputation and Windows is easily buttoned down.

    Warez sites still hack the dickens out of each release and offer mainstream AV's so my feeling is been all along that if they can be reversed so darn easy I don't want them and swore them off long ago. If a reversal group can disassemble them like that then those vendor's AV's are potentially fatal as info get passed around to bad actors etc.
     
  4. mekelek

    mekelek Registered Member

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    it's one shill, called Slyguy, he's banned from here.
    he basically pulls a product out of his ***, makes a thread about it on malwaretips how it's the best product he has ever seen, then in a day or two, he slowly starts ******** on said product.
    Forticlient, Trend Micro,Sophos, Norton/Symantec Endpoint, Panda, Cylance, just to name his recent best products turned to worst in a matter of days.
    completely denies the test results done in the hub of MT when it's against his opinion and the sad part is, people follow him like he's the messiah.

    it's offtopic, so i rather not discuss this anymore, since nobody seem to care that there is a PR shill running around preaching "fake news" on MT.
     
  5. bellgamin

    bellgamin Registered Member

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    Ah so... Thanks for the info. I supposed that "users" referred to more than 1. It sounds like "Slyguy" lives up to his user name. Banned here... sobeit, Wilders is blessed with great Mods! As to MT... I visit that *place* rarely, & even less.

    The rise of WD is a repeat of the Internet Explorer scenario. IE gradually caused the demise of other browsers. Once IE had become totally dominant, it began a slide toward mediocrity & porosity. IMO, the same will occur if WD becomes totally dominant to the degree that it lacks competition from other AVs*.

    AVs (including WD) continue to improve because of (1) tests like the topic of this thread, PLUS (2) they are competing against the bad guys, PLUS (a big plus) (3) they are competing against each other. The less competition WD has, the more it will follow the downhill road blazed by IE.

    Further, WD is a Windows phenonenom, and Windows is in the twilight days of its dominance as an OS in the mobile arena, and in the laptop/desktop/tablet arena as well. Chromebooks, Linux, etc are gaining user base every day. Also, I haven't given up hope that Apple will resume making improvements to its line of computers. When the sun sets on Windows' dominance, WD will sink to porosity & obscurity -- BUT the most effective commercial AVs will still be needed AND available.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    * I use the acronymn "AV" because it is the common designation for this genre of security apps. However, "AM" (AntiMalware) would be more descriptive. All of the leading AVs fight against a lot more than viruses (the "V" in AV), and the better ones are no longer solely reliant on signatures.
     
  6. itman

    itman Registered Member

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    The only other thing I can add to this is the following:

    Microsoft is competing against the major AV vendors for market share. The money to be had is in the enterprise and SMB marketplace. Microsoft could care less about the consumer marketplace. If Microsoft can't make significant market share gains in the commercial area, it will drop WD development as if it were a "hot potato."
     
  7. Mango555

    Mango555 Registered Member

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    As I count, there are currently about 20 mainstream A/V vendors. There is probably about the same number of lesser known companies. The top companies market worldwide while the lesser known are regional in nature. In their marketing material they all boast to have the best technologies to keep us safe. Some use signatures, some use the cloud, some use both and some use some kind of voodoo magic.

    For some years now, probably due to Microsoft's Defender improvements, most third party vendors have been adding all kinds of bells and whistles that have nothing to do with security in order to stay relevant in the marketplace. Most market their newest product for the next year when the current year is barely starting.

    Sooo.... speaking about shiny objects, there is plenty to look at and test or not. Your choiceo_O
     
  8. cruelsister

    cruelsister Registered Member

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    ITMan- Although MSFT has both the Money and Technology to make WD the best product on the market, can you imagine the lawsuits involved if they actually do so? Symantec, Mcafee, etc, etc. would be whining like the pigs that they are stating that MSFT is corrupting the Market by giving away excellent malware protection for Free (Anti-Competition)- just like the lawsuits against Microsoft for packaging IE into Windows.

    Capitalism over Consumer Protection.
     
  9. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    Yes, consumer marketplace is only needed as source of data so that they can offer better protection to enterprises. That's why it's free. We give you protection you give us your data. It's similar to other free AV solutions. But main purpose is money from companies and enterprises and not "making most secure OS" for end users as it's sometimes presented.
     
  10. Firecat

    Firecat Registered Member

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    They could make WD a paid version, price it nominally and give it all the best tech they got, they did make OneCare a while ago and it was not bad at all. It would mitigate the antitrust concerns I guess.
     
  11. TheErzengel

    TheErzengel Registered Member

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    When despising someone is more important than talking about a product, it makes this topic boring.

    Please, everyone has their opinion whether they like it or not. I use emsi and Kaspersky, I bought panda recently for other devices and I love it to this day.
     
  12. itman

    itman Registered Member

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    Now that anti-trust is fresh in my mind from my recent NSS Labs thread postings, I really don't think that will be a problem.

    Microsoft has already countered a large part of any U.S. gov. review by offering WD for free on the Win consumer versions. Then there is the whole issue of enforcement of antitrust laws in the U.S.. If some may recall, the gov. was taking a hard look at Microsoft a while back in to regards to monopoly status. That all blew over with Gates testifying before the politicos in D.C. and becoming in turn the "the darling and embodiment" of U. S. capitalism. I am also sure there was "backroom greasing of the election monetary skids" in play.
     
  13. cruelsister

    cruelsister Registered Member

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    Yes indeed they could- but they won't. There are a number of reasons for this (Sorry in advance, but we have to talk some Financials here...):

    1). Microsoft would first have to divorce WD from the Operating System. Can you imagine the Headlines? "Microsoft Makes their Product Less Secure!!!!!".
    2). They would have to create a separate entity to sell and market WD. This would take a whole lot of cash. And to what end?
    3). The stock of MSFT has rallied greatly in the past year, with a current Enterprise value of about 825 BILLION USD. They also have free cash (chump change in the Corporate Couches) of over 133 billion USD. Contrast this to the ENTIRE MARKET VALUE of Symantec, which is about a paltry 13 billion.
    4). Even worse, International Data Corporation has estimated that the ENTIRE worldwide revenue for security-related hardware, software and services may "only" be 100 billion USD for 2019.

    So to sum up, Microsoft can eat EVERYONE in the Security World with their spare cash. But this would come at the cost of lawsuits that would drag on until the End Of Time and really, really bad publicity. The Game Just Ain't Worth The Candle.

    (ps- I hate to fly my Geek Flag so high, but the reason why WD will never ever be supreme in the Security space has resulted in many hours of after-party drunken discussions with people that are always the Smartest in the Room),
     
  14. clocks

    clocks Registered Member

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    I agree with cruelsister. MS can't win here, whatever they do. And large US tech companies like MS are huge targets for the fine-happy EU.
     
  15. guest

    guest Guest

    Come on Sis bring in the money lol.

    MS has indeed no need to make it paid, by being free, they are slowly asphixiating their rivals.
     
  16. 142395

    142395 Guest

    I don't feel MS is very serious about security - even for corp, Office365 Business still limit password length to 16 char and doesn't support U2F. Even worse for consumer ofc, until recently free Outlook.com didn't have malware scan (confirmed by real malware in 2016).

    But they're very serious about ML. For other AV company, ML may be just a "hot word". But MS seems to take ML as their life line to survive next decades. Anyone who're in ML filed would notice how much they've been putting on this.

    Recent rise of WD's detection seems to be mostly due to cloud part, and thus this FPs (probably even with extensive whitelist). FP is inevitable for ML as it run on probability bases (even when linearly separable, in a sense). Malware detection itself is ofc one of the field where ML will be useful, but some of the results here will also be generalized to use in different arena, and vice versa.

    TL; DR: MS' focus won't be being top in AV industry, but being top in ML industry.
     
  17. cruelsister

    cruelsister Registered Member

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    Oh God!! You are correct. This is what happens when you get a corner office at Goldman...
     
  18. itman

    itman Registered Member

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    I believe many are overlooking the fact that there is a paid ver. of WD called WD ATP. It is this product that Microsoft actively promoting to corps.. Remember that the money is the endpoint market.

    Where Microsoft would run into trouble with many gov. anti-trust laws and the like is if they directly tied WD protection mechanisms to internal OS features. This by the way is really the only way to create the protection missing in today's security solutions. This "mating" of the OS with security protection is only something Microsoft could do. As such, it would give them an unfair advantage over third party security vendors. It is a given that Microsoft will never make Windows open source or allow direct access to its internals other than existing API, AMSI, etc. methods to third party security vendors.
     
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2018
  19. guest

    guest Guest

    Exactly, and it is true for other AV vendors.
     
  20. __Nikopol

    __Nikopol Registered Member

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    How would any AV vendor have any right to complain about WD in court if they all have free versions already? Also you "pay" for WD by buying a license for windows from MS. Two things to easily win any lawsuit.

    And MT is one of the worst forums that I was ever a member in. You get random bans for life and then there is no way to see any of their good information. Absolute worst ever.
     
  21. bellgamin

    bellgamin Registered Member

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    When I registered at MT, my first & only post -- in the new member thread -- was: Hi, I'm from Hawaii etc etc. When I tried to log in the next day, I was reported as banned. I sent them emails asking why. After several days, I finally got a reply saying it was a computer error. Good grief -- is that forum adminstered by a computer? Shades of "2001 a space odessy"! A computer is not a sentient, responsible person. Computers are programmed by PEOPLE. How pathetic that MT blamed an inept process on a machine. I suppose I am a member in good standing there but I have not revisited. I now have little confidence in anything posted there so why visit?
     
  22. Triple Helix

    Triple Helix Specialist

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    It's Trollville there anyways and everything goes......
     
  23. xxJackxx

    xxJackxx Registered Member

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    It would seem we forgot the Internet Explorer incident... and the Windows Media Player one... etc.
     
  24. __Nikopol

    __Nikopol Registered Member

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    It seems like even microsoft forgot to implement what the agreed on. I never saw a prompt of any kind asking me to download chrome or firefox. Anyway, that's a different case i think.

    I never even got any response. Pure garbage. Two times banned :p

    @all: Anyway, how do we even know which AV to choose if we don't try them ourselves? Apparently any website reviewing them is not trustworthy. Or is there an exception? Any site whose judgement we can trust?

    I installed Avira Free yesterday because Kaspersky free interfered with my VPN. It was horrible. It installed like 6 different bloatware and uninstalling them **** my windows settings, services and whatnot. After a reboot my Intel graphic driver got mangled. Impossible to resolve, nicely so. I had to recover from an image I made before.
    Now I use WD again. KAV is good, but it is too paranoid about VPNs.
     
  25. bellgamin

    bellgamin Registered Member

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    I trust AV-Comparatives. In addition to displaying the results of each of their tests, AV-C also displays very detailed information concerning the methodology used in that particular test. The proponent of AV-C is a respected, long-time member of Wilders, user name IBK.

    I agree with Nikopol that the only sure way to determine an AV's "play-nicely status" relative to any specific computer is to give it a reasonably lengthy trial on THAT specific computer.

    When it comes to determining an AV's protective effectiveness, a trial run on my computer simply will not give me any useful information whatsoever. Ergo, I rely heavily on the test reports of AV-comparatives. No others. I also give a LOT of credence to a few frequent posters here at Wilders because I can tell they have waaay more expertise than me, and I can discern that they are *relatively* unbiased in their comments.

    As I understand it, any effort to do AV tests approaching "perfection" would crash in flames against the 3-fold barrier of time-cost and money-cost and manpower-cost. Plus there is the fact that all AVs, and all testers thereof, are taking aim at an accelerating, constantly evolving target called malware. So it seems to me that there are just 2 main alternatives for choosing an AV: (1) give "informed creedence" to "pretty good" tests by reasonably objective test organizations, or (2) roll the dice and base our choices solely or primarily on hear-say and popularity contests.

    I feel an AV is NOT absolutely needed if one makes prudent use of such apps as OSArmor, EXE Radar Pro, Voodoo, AppGuard, etc. However, I still subscribe to NON-free AVs from time to time. Reason for using & paying for AVs that I feel are presently optional is that I believe that the bigger AVs have the talent & money to do R&D so as to keep abreast of malware developments & develop new weapons against them. AFAIK, most of the non-signature-based alternatives are very small organizations -- "1-trick ponies" with limited resources for competing for top talent or making meaningful investments in R&D.

    AVs are motivated to improve because they must compete for business. As a user of AVs I feel that those AVs that use independent testing as a means of competing are much to be preferred versus those AVs that compete primarily by advertising puffery and blarney.

    TO WIT: When WindowsDefender was first tested by AV-C, it did poorly. But Microsoft kept coming back for more punishment, & WD gradually improved and is now one of the leaders. I am not a M$ fan but I give them high credit for sticking with testing. I believe WD got better at least partly because it was tested. Whether or not M$ improved WD by "war-gaming" the tests is neither here nor there -- for whatever reason, WD is much better now than it used to be.

    WD's record is just 1 example of why I believe that COMPARATIVE testing is a vital factor in motivating AVs to keep improving in order to compete for business. IMO, we can encourge AVs to put heavy emphasis on anti-malware R&D by supporting those AVs that submit themselves to comparative tests by independent labs.
     
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