Carbonite Announces Webroot Purchase

Discussion in 'other security issues & news' started by guest, Feb 7, 2019.

  1. Muddy3

    Muddy3 Registered Member

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    The proof/demonstration for me is not the tests but my real-life experience. I experienced a dramatic difference between reputable and household AV names I had used, and with which I had continually found myself getting infected, and then Prevx->Webroot which I changed to in late 2006 and since when I have never knowingly been infected. You will have seen my much longer post on this experience here.

    By the way, I didn't believe the so-called "snake oil salesmanship", the "Koolaid mumbo jumbo" (some people here and on other websites are pretty scathing about Webroot) and then get carried away by it all and so become a kind of unthinking "Webroot zombie crusader". Rather, I discovered my infections stopped dead the day I changed my AV (I was astonished as anyone would be!) and so I then worked backwards to try and understand how Prevx/Webroot works so I could better understand why I was no longer getting infected.


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    I don't want to be rude, Bellgamin, but that is dishonest. You and I know perfectly well that the phrase in your post that now reads:
    read, at the time I was writing my post:
    Maybe that was not what you intended to write at the time (I can't read your mind!) but that was certainly the precise form of words in your post. On my side, perhaps I should have checked if you had further edited your post particularly with reference to those words I quoted before finally posting, but I didn't.


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    One final point. You refer affectionately (and in my opinion rightly so!) to Prevx and seem to say that you believe that Webroot's gone off the rails a bit relative to how Prevx was:
    I don't know if you're thinking about the AV tests when you say that—I presume you are unless of course you're referring to your own real life negative experience with Webroot—but I clearly remember Prevx's then boss Mel Morris saying brutally, again and again, over a period of time and in different blogs, that Prevx would never ever participate in the AV tests unless and until those organisations radically changed their ways of testing. We can now see the reason why. Morris knew that if they did, they would be mercilessly slaughtered.

    For better or for worse, Webroot has taken a different line and we see the results. However, if Webroot has been shown, as you believe, to have its "fly...unzipped", we can be certain that Prevx would have fared no better—indeed, maybe would have fared even worse.

    Anyway, we have different views on this matter, and I think I have said all I wish to say on this matter. Did you read the rest of that thread: there is some very interesting information from the architect of Prevx and Webroot SecureAnywhere, which is most germane to the conversation we have been having? If not, I very much hope you do.

    *that is, with the one exception of West Coast Labs, an organisation that had a different approach to testing and which sadly no longer exists
     
  2. bellgamin

    bellgamin Registered Member

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    My son-in-law hasn't used any AV in over 8 years, & he has never been infected. Perhaps he is lucky. And, yes, he does surf in the web's shark-infested waters from time to time. However, he has other security so he isn't actually surfing in the nude.

    The only times I was ever infected I was using Dr Solomon AV, then later, McAfee. I used Webroot for a while & never had any problems. Webroot is good, but I think it would be even better if it put a better guard at the computer's front door. I also believe that such an action would enhance its marketability.

    Yes, I agree with you -- we have had a good discussion. You made some very good points that I hadn't thought deeply about before. So let's leave it at that, so as to not needlessly expand this important thread. Grace & peace to you, Muddy-san.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2019
  3. Muddy3

    Muddy3 Registered Member

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    Indeed, grace and peace to you as well. I believe you, like me, are a Christian and if so those two words have a particular and profound meaning to both of us.

    I had just prepared an edit to add to my post to be placed at the end of the section about the "100% bullet-proof" bit, when I saw your reply. I might as well add it to this post in case it's helpful (and in the hope that it's not too polemical :doubt:).

    EDIT:
    Indeed, the whole tenor of that post has been changed by your edits so that while before you were addressing me, now you are addressing Techfox. For example, your post originally began with "Your rationale sounds valid, to a point” but you have now edited it to begin “Techfox's rationale sounds valid, to a point”. Throughout the post, you have made similar changes with your edits so that the post now reads differently.

    By the way, I think your problem is that you don’t realise the way Techfox explains that Webroot works, is precisely how Prevx worked. His post could just as well have been written in 2009 or 2010 about Prevx, and not one single word would have needed to be changed. If you loved Prevx’s methodology, then logically there really isn’t a reason to have such a different attitude about Webroot’s (the only difference being that Prevx didn’t allow itself to be tested so you couldn’t read the results but Webroot does so you can!). Conversely, if you are now suspicious of Webroot’s methodology as excellently described by Techfox in his post, then you should have been (or should now be) suspicious of Prevx’s.

    And by the way, to my reading he is not saying that Webroot (and Prevx) are “100% bullet-proof”—just better. But that, of course, is his (and incidentally my) opinion (albeit based on our—and also many others’—real-life experience).
     
  4. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    What really annoys me about Webroot is the need to constantly run scans. For example, I just installed WSA on a test computer and did a context menu scan of a flash drive containing many installers, some of which were for PUPs. A number of things were detected and I chose to allow them, so that they would be whitelisted and not detected again. After this, WSA ran a second scan. There was no need to run a second scan. I had ignored everything it detected on the first scan, so what is the purpose of doing another scan? It's not as if it had removed malware and was checking to make sure it had been fully removed. The second scan did not detect anything, which was to be expected. But, WSA was not done with scanning yet. WSA's system tray icon showed an explanation mark. When I opened it, it said that threats had been detected and wanted mme to run a scan of my computer.

    As for detection rates, I can't give any insight. It's highly unlikely I will get infected if I use WSA, or any other security software.
     
  5. Muddy3

    Muddy3 Registered Member

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    I've configured my devices to scan just once a week as I do not consider the scheduled scan to be the most important part of Webroot's protection technology. The scans are short and unintrusive. Which means I don't even notice they're running!

    However, if Webroot ever does detect something resident that it determines to be malicious (I can't remember the last time for me), it then goes into super-aggressive mode regarding scans. I believe this is fundamental to the way Webroot works.

    If you are correct in saying that every detection it had made you had created an exception for (and what is more it was an external medium), then I can understand that you found its subsequent behaviour to be annoying to say the least. You might want to contact Support about that but I'm not certain that will change their approach as, for them, maybe they now considered that, given what Webroot had found with a new install, a deeper scan was required for the sake of prudence—a generic decision designed to cover all types of users.
     
  6. guest

    guest Guest

    My experience, so far, with Webroot since i beta-test it from day one:

    i like:
    - ID shield
    - anti-theft features via web console.
    - low-footprint

    i dislike:
    - too many scans.
    - accumulation of junk DB files in WRdata folder because of the perpetual journaling system when Webroot detect a unknown process/program. There is no ways to turn it off.
    - Little bug when WSA is used on SUA, there is double-prompt for same process.
    - those system-breaking updates...too many to my taste, lucky my systems were offline when it happened.
    - the denial or "deaf ears" when issues/bugs are submitted.

    i'm not-so-impressed:
    - the rollback system, an AV shouldn't let a malware run even if restricted; it was ok a decade ago, now they are too complex and malicious to let them run even 10sec on the system.
    - the restriction-based sandbox, not intuitive.
    - Detection rate, i consider it subpar to the others.
    - Behavior Blocker, very average.

    so based on this, WSA would be more a complement to my other security softs than the main protection.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 26, 2019
  7. ProTruckDriver

    ProTruckDriver Registered Member

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    I believe the dismantlement of Webroot has begun: :(
    Announcing the End of Sale/End of Life for Webroot® Business Mobile Protection
    https://community.webroot.com/mobil...for-webroot-business-mobile-protection-338258


     
  8. Triple Helix

    Triple Helix Specialist

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  9. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    Indeed, but why buy or 'bury' Webroot? It's not as if they were competition to Carbonite, which is a backup service. Doesn't make sense.
     
  10. ProTruckDriver

    ProTruckDriver Registered Member

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    IMHO, I believe Mr.Potts former CEO of Webroot seen a good opportunity to take his "Golden Parachute" for retirement now or later and sold out. Why else would a Company that was doing good (Webroot) sell out to a Company (Carbonite) for peanuts that has bad ratings. But that's just MHO. I don't believe we will ever know for sure why this has happen.
     
  11. Muddy3

    Muddy3 Registered Member

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    That theory doesn't make sense to me as it was apparently a unanimous decision by the board of directors and supported by the (private) shareholders. But I do agree that it is strange. All I can say (and surmise) is that often a company that appears on the outside to be successful and doing well can appear very differently when you see the balance sheets.
     
  12. ProTruckDriver

    ProTruckDriver Registered Member

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    It could be that False Positive that Webroot had awhile back that hosed a lot of business computers could have played a good part in the sell off. Maybe they lost a lot of business customers with it. But to sell for peanuts to a company with bad ratings. Things were going very good until Mr. Potts took the helm of Webroot. Is he the fault, don't know. It will probably remain a mystery.
     
  13. Muddy3

    Muddy3 Registered Member

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    On the Glassdoor website, he had a higher rating among Webroot employees than the previous CEO Dick Williams*. So I am not convinced by that either. But your first point may be extremely pertinent (who can or will ever know, it having been a privately owned company?).

    *not, may I hasten to add, that Dick Williams had a poor rating
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2019
  14. guest

    guest Guest

    Not maybe, they did lost a lot.
     
  15. ProTruckDriver

    ProTruckDriver Registered Member

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    They also lost a lot of regular customers with the fiasco of Webroot's Password Manager that went down for over a half a year. Webroot being silent about what was going on with PWM didn't help matters either. Now they announce the end of life with the business android mobile protection which will probably lose business customers also.

    The next or future fiasco will be when Webroot changes their Backup & Sync to Carbonite's backup. I have used Webroot's Backup and Sync for many years without any problems. Their backup was fast. I have just recently deleted all my backup from Webroot when the news broke that Carbonite was buying them out. According to reviews Carbonite is noted for losing backups / slow backups. I'll sit back and watch this unfold with both companies. Hopefully they will prove me wrong and Webroot and Carbonite will expand and be a better company. We shall see.
     
  16. Muddy3

    Muddy3 Registered Member

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    @ProTruckDriver, I agree with most of what you say but not regarding Webroot Backup & Sync. Webroot Backup may indeed be excellent (I can't say as I have used CrashPlan Pro for my data backup for many years), and indeed if you say so I trust you on this, but their Sync is flaky if not broken. It cannot be relied upon except, perhaps, to sync a few non-critical files in the dedicated special sync folder (can't remember its name).

    And therein lies the problem. Webroot's core anti-malware engines and technology are simply outstanding (notwithstanding the extremely negative opinion of some naysayers here on the internet) but many/most (mercifully not all) of its bells and whistles are mediocre and/or broken. Here's hoping that its acquisition by Carbonite will allow it to become leaner and meaner and therefore really come into its own. Here's also hoping we are neither seeing the beginning of the dismantling of Webroot as a company, nor its dumbing down to the mediocrity, as we are led to believe by many reports and reviews on the internet, of Carbonite's offerings.
     
  17. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    Wow what a flashback. I started out on Windows 98 and of the security pograms at the time I used Webroot Spy Sweeper.
    My how times change in a sneeze.

    Third Party freelance developers began honing their skills and turning out some better preventions and I gladly jumped on that bandwagon. Over the span of some time and distance these made a bigger splash with results and carried over.

    Perhaps Carbonite will juice up Webroot's best and make it a solid contender again.
     
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