Online Armor Free or Comodo? Which one to choose?

I recently installed Avast free version on my parents PC and now I'm looking for a free firewall to put on. I was going to go with Comodo but I've read a few reports of it having problems with Avast so now I'm back to thinking about Online Armor Free.

I have read on another forum that OA Free doesn't update automatically, but my my question (or query) is why would it need to? I would have thought that a firewall was a rather solid piece of software and considering it isn't actually detecting viruses there would be no need to update it. If anyone could help me shed some light on this I would be most grateful. Or if people have any other suggestions for free firewalls that would be most helpful.

Incidentally they are running Vista (Sp1 I think although I need to update this as well).

 

IMO for whitelisting / blacklisting list update from the company maybe.. I would suggest you try private firewall which is also very good

 

So, updating the firewall would purely update a list of know dodgy sites/web addresses?

I've never heard of PrivateFirewall, is it basic enough for a couple in their 60s to use? I need something which doesn't throw up loads of alerts as I don't live close to my parents.

 

It depends on their computer knowledge, if they don't understand how to use the firewall then it is basically useless to them. All it will be is nagware and they won't understand how to answer the questions correctly.

My mother is 64 and about the only firewall she understands is Windows default firewall. Everything else blows her mind and blocks what she wants to do.

She already know about the basic things not to do on the web, because she basically stays safe only using Windows default firewall and Avast Free.

She is using Windows Vista SP2 and loves it. However I disabled UAC because it was just an annoyance to her. UAC doesn't protect you anyway if the allow the actions which most people do without reading the notifications.

Thanks.

 

So if all they are using it for is email, some online shopping and just general web stuff (local government sites) then windows firewall should be ok?

I thought about turning off UAC but haven't got around to it yet. To be honest I think I need to sort out quite a bit with there PC. I mean, is it normal to have 50 processes in Task Manager? The vast majority of these are Microsoft services.

 

If you install a secure browser like Firefox, Chrome or Opera with Adblock and tell them to not use Internet Explorer that will give them better protection.

My mother was getting most of her malware from clicking on ads, the adblock did wonders. Some government sites require Internet Explorer in that case you can install Simple Adblock for IE.

Online email like Gmail, Yahoo, Windows Live, etc are much safer than using an email client. Another problem that my mother had, she was using Windows Mail and keep clicking on the spam. Once I switched her to Yahoo a lot of that spam stopped. Now she knows better than to click on spam links.

For online shopping, as long as they buy from trusted sources, they should be ok with just Windows firewall. Just to make sure to install all of the Windows Updates and keep them set to Auto.

Vista has a lot of processes and services running by default. You can use some free programs from Mz Tweak- http://www.mztweak.com/products.html
to disable services and system startup entries not needed. Mz Services Manager and Mz StartUp Manager can be very helpful. There are other free tools on the site like Mz Vista Force which has all the tools in one program if you want to do a little tweaking.

Good Luck.

 

and also application ratings and stuff.. if they wanna update their trusted vendor list or something like that.. As far private firewall you can always put it to training mode and advise the users that if they get popups after the full training mode then there can be couple of reasons 1} they are installing some new software in that case they can choose to allow or block if they know its legit 2} if for no reason at all they get popups they can always search the process thats asking access... nowadays signatures alone cannot fight the crap thats out there..IMO its always good to have some layered security..and I really like this firewall because they give you lot of options.. you can even customize the process monitor or even turn it off if you dont find any need for it or use something else...

 

Just to share my own experience

My father which also 60 something, so I set him : avira free, mbam active protection, windows firewall, spyshelter free, firefox with adblock

Note :
Avira its light yet effective IMO
mbam also use ip filtering so it can help them avoid dangerous site.
Windows firewall ...
Adblock use malware domain list
And last but not least : spyshelter with auto block on suspicious activities
(Sometimes use keyscrambler free to replace ss )

yeah I don't really trust windows xp firewall that much
So I give him extra layer of protection with mininal impact on the system as a whole

 

The easiest., light and very secure setup would be PREVX retail and windows firewall, thats all. This basically is a "set and forget" setup with strong online protection and ability to control the protection remotely (e.g. detected thread, status of the system and license). Most infections comes from online browsing on legit sites, a firewall will not help at all with novice users.

But, PREX has a price...

 

Thanks for the replies folks. They do already have MalwareBytes installed but it's the free version which I use when I visit them. The reason I'm going for free stuff is because of the amount of time they spend on the PC (very little really).

They do shop at trusted sites such as Amazon so in that sense they are relatively safe and the browser they use is Firefox. I've not yet installed AdBlock (don't know why because it is installed on my machine) but that is something which I will do when I go and see them.

It may well be that Windows firewall will suffice, I've just never used it as I've always preferred all-in-one security suites.

 

I say you should try them both for yourself, and then decide. I believe OA has a more user friendly setup, but that's just my opinion. I like OA's firewall in particular. It has the best tabbed interface you will find anywhere. It is so easy to use, and has lots of options.

 

Well,


In my PERSONAL experience, I would say that Comodo firewall is more silent than OA free when it comes to its HIPS part. For example, I'm on Win 7 Pro using ESET NOD32 v4.2.71.10 on real-time and MBAM & SAS on-demand scanning. Neither one on-access. Thus, when I need to update either one [MBAM or SAS] I just start the application and hit update, to update the defs database.

Before installing Comodo firewall on my PC, I was user of ZA Pro, but it was heavy on I/O, hard disk access, high CPU usage due to the vsmon.exe component on ZA Pro. I uninstalled ZA Pro, then I used OA but it was an horrible experience for me so I also removed it. Finally, I started using the Win 7 Firewall. Although, I always wanted a software firewall with outbound control and support for IPv6. Win 7 Firewall offered only IPv6 , not outbound control so when I read last December that Comodo had finally started supporting IPv6 I wanted to give that firewall a try and...so far [knock on wood], my experience with it has been a very pleasant one. No alerts at all !!! The only alerts I got were related to Diskeeper 2010 due to DkService.exe and when I installed WinRar 4.0 beta 6 on top of my WinRar installation, version 3.93.

WinRar installer triggered alerts from Comodo firewall D+ because inexplicably it's NOT digitally signed [].

Every program I start on my PC, from Office to SAS or MBAM never trigger alerts from Comodo firewall D+.

With OA, the story was very different, however. At DEFAULT settings, when I started for example: SAS from the Start menu, to update its definitions, I got like 4 or 5 ALERTS coming from OA firewall [free version]. If it's supposed to be so quiet as many here claim...why does it trigger so many alerts whenever you start a very WELL KNOWN application?

I don't know. your mileage may vary from mine when it comes to OA but I haven't had any problems with the firewall from Comodo so far thus, I have not negative comments to state about it.


Regards,


Carlos

 

I'm a beta tester for OA, and the latest beta build does not prompt me for much. I don't get many pop-ups at all. I noticed the problem with excessive pop-ups began after OA became 64bit compatible. It did for me anyways. I think most users will be very pleased when OA releases it's next Version or build. I believe most complaints I've seen posted here at wilders about OA have already been fixed. The current beta build runs much better for me than 4.5.1.431.

 

I was reading thru the posts on this thread and I went from Comodo to OA on my W7 64 and for the past month or so been having issues with IE8 freezing.

I figured it was just screwed up somehow but seeing these comments of issues with OA went back to Comodo and guess what..IE8 no longer freezes...Looks like I'm back with Comodo until another release of OA is out.

 

Comodo, I've NEVER had an ISSUE with Comodo, EVER.

 

Try both and see what you'll like best in combination with your AV and on-demand apps.

 

don't know why comodo in this forum is not so regarded ? is there an incompatibility with avira and avast?

about the v5 , does somebody know how much ram & resource comodo need ?

thanks

 

I think it all started with this(may be wrong but it's a good read):

http://www.calendarofupdates.com/updates/index.php?showtopic=19279

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=242453

I don't seem to find any incompatibility with avast/avira. Have that in two of my pc's. No issues at all. But that's just me.

 

Same here. No issues with Avast or NOD 32 or Prevx. It works perfectly fine. Absolutely low on resources.

Tempting to drop PrevxSOL... Don't think it would impact my security much (especially online banking). Need to think further...

Thanks,
Harsha.

 

MSE+Windows Firewall+Chrome.

Unless they're heavy into porn or warez, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

Online Armor Free or Comodo? Which one to choose?

Answer: Neither. Just use your windows firewall and use common sense.

Why make your PC sluggish using an third party firewall? Waste of time IMO.

 

Just wondering if you put OA in learning mode and then ran everything once or twice. This eliminates over 90% of popups since it teaches OA what runs normally...

 

low resource , the previous versions only 8mb (service) private memory ,i/o and cpu almost 0

the version 5 i guess 60 mb

 

+1.

 

ohhh...i'm currently at my work place. Will check it out how much exactly it takes..

how about cpu,i/o? is it still the same?

Thanks,
Harsha.