Paid Security Suite vs Free Layered protection

Good Evening ! Currently using G-Data I.S.2011 waiting for the soon to be released 2012 version...I'm using a very basic Compaq with 2 gigs of ram and a new set-up of Fiber and a VDSL-modem router. G-Data is light and responsive so far in conjunction with Malwarebytes. I believe the new hardware and wiring has a lot too do with improved performance. I used too have an old Speedstream modem and the wiring left a lot to be desired. So sometimes a little Spring tune-up is in order. Sincerely...Securon

 

Someone mentioned "It's useless to use avast! mailshield if you use webmail"

This is not true, Avast is not specific to a client. Malware can send emails from your pc without a client. *e.g spam emails

 

Since that was me, I'll explain further. If you use web mail, and don't have any client on your system, it's useless. Web mail services have their own scanner. Also, how will malware send spam emails without an email client? Besides, two things: 1. Malware can't do anything period if they are caught by Avast before they infect you. 2. If there is malware in an email, then, again, either the web mail provider's scanner will catch it, or, if you save the file from your web mail or even from a client installed on your system, if Avast can detect it, it will catch it, mail shield enabled or not.

 

Nah I doubt it, my RAM's usually 35-45% full so I cannot see what kind of difference it could make.
I noticed longer boot times (i.e. it longer for the desktop to appear and for Windows to be really usable after booting), and applications took a few more seconds to open up, e.g. Chrome loads up almost immediately, after a sec at the most with Avira or MSE, whereas with G-Data, F-Secure or Emsisoft Anti-Malware it took something like 3-4 seconds. I believe G-Data was the fastest of the latter bunch though.

 

Here is simple example that you can send an email without a client:
http://pastebin.com/vw7uuEHw

Again you do not need a big fancy email client to send an email!
You could get infected with a spam bot and send hundreds\thousands of spam emails every day without using thunderbird\outlook etc. Avast email scanner would pick up these spam emails being sent. (i've tested..)

 

The other shields wouldn't catch them, or the malware?

 

You're not getting my point, or I'm misunderstanding you. You need a client, whether that be one installed on your system or through a web mail provider to send an email. Unless I missed some technological breakthrough, even a bot needs an email address to send its spam from. What I'm telling you, is that if Avast can detect this bot, it's going to stop it, with or without the mail shield. If it can't detect it, then it doesn't matter how many shields you have up, you're getting infected. But, the bot still needs an email address, and if you don't have one...it isn't going to send spam mail.

Now, if you have a web email provider, and you get infected and the malware steals your password to the account, it's game over. But, again, if Avast detected it, the bot is D.O.A and won't send anything. Remember, the bot still has to run. If it can't run, it can't infect. And if it can't infect, it can't send spam mail.

 

If it's just spam(text\image email trying to get u to buy something etc), no. Unless avast! has a signature for the bot that sends the message, it will run free and could spam emails.

I *think* avast must use a whitelist on email clients(default deny? not sure). I've made the same thing in python\java and avast alerts both times on sending the mail, However perfectly fine sending thru thunderbird when I used it.

The point I'm getting at is that, The email shield is not useless in certain situations(eg, a firewall could replace this easily). It's a nice light addition and it seems to be default deny not requiring a signature.
If malware gets passed your other layers of defence, You can still stop your machine turning into a spam bot. This is regardless of if you have an email client on your pc or not, they can still send emails even if you don't use something such as outlook.

hope this helps someone

 

Celebrating a solid year of being infection-free

COMODO Firewall w/D+ (Free)
*Highly configurable
*Whitelisting for Firewall
*Whitelisting for Defense+
*Whitelisting for Sandbox
*Stealth port wizard
*Various sensitivity modes for both Firewall and Defense+
*Defense+ functions as a great AE, or 'Anti-Executable'
*Buffer overflow protection
*Heuristic command-line analysis for applications capable of executing code
*Built-in task manager that can preform the following on a selected process
1) Terminate
2) Terminate & block
3) Submit for analysis
4) Look-up in COMODO database
*Unrecognized files are automatically scanned in the cloud using
1) Cloud based whitelisting
2) Cloud based antivirus
3) Cloud based behavior analysis
*In-depth report on any suspicious executable files submitted
Example http://camas.comodo.com Bifrost Trojan report

Avast! Antivirus 6 (Free)
*~ Removed Direct PDF Link as per AV-Comparatives Request - See Detection Tests page for the actual PDF ~ 99.3% detection rate in the latest AV-Comparatives On-Demand test (v5)
*~ Removed Direct PDF Link as per AV-Comparatives Request - See Performance Tests page for the actual PDF ~ 4th place in the latest AV-Comparatives Performance test[/URL] (v5)
*Easy to configure
*Boot-time scan
*User-defined website blacklist
*Reputation rating for IE, Firefox search results
*Eight configurable shields
1) File System Shield
2) Mail Shield
3) Web Shield
4) P2P Shield
5) IM Shield
6) Network Shield
7) Script Shield
8 ) Behavior Shield

So you see, I'm not paying $60+ a year on a suite that has all of the bells and whistles that will/claim keep me protected. It's these two FREE products, and some simple safe-browsing practices that have kept me safe for this long. I wouldn't trade this for any paid-for suite out there.

 

I like it! Makes sense...and it's fun!

 

Excellent Choice:
The Best Firewall + HIPS together with the Best FREE AntiVirus!

 

Good idea - I will add my MBAM realtime to this and it will be excellent free suite for me. After G Data license expires.

 

Most folks mention incompatibilities between security products, but dont know why they occur. Here are a few reasons I have seen.

1. Excessive Stack Usage: The stack in the Windows kernel is very small. What invariable happens when you have two drivers filtering API calls, or network traffic, is that separately they work great, but together they use so much stack on certain code paths that they overflow the stack and crash the kernel causing a blue screen. The Sygate firewall drivers used to be notorious for doing this. To an extent the Windows Filter Manager alleviated the problem for file system filters due to its call out approach.. but other API events still cause issues.

2. Deadlocks - This is another huge problem where one driver will generate I/O, that is filtered by the other, which then does causing something to happens that generates more I/O which driver 1 filters, leading to a deadlock.

 

Just get hardware web box with all these features to protect your network. Then on the PC side still have FW, Cloud base Pest Control Web Access using some sort of DNS.

 

Maybe not?

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=74688.0

I don't think a spambot would necessarily have to harvest email addresses from your computer to be effective. I could be just using your CPU cycles and bandwidth to to do it's job, maybe the mail shield checks for such suspicious behavior for port 25? And I don't think I would be difficult for a malware author to create a program to send emails on it own w/o a native email client installed by the user.

 

very nice
me too i use avast free now but i dont know if i will use comodo firewall ?? coz i dont know if its will slow down my computer or the browsing the net , i use avast free with windows 7 firewall ? should i disable windows firewall and put comodo firewall ??​

 

personnally, i use Comodo Firewall (D+) in proactive configuration with custom setttings alongside Avast free in High heuristic, i add Immunet 3 as a companion cloud AV. then MBAM and Comodo Cleaner Essential (a more powerful version of comodo AV) as some of my on-demand scan softwares. if im testing suspicious "softwares" i run them in Shadow Defender (since sandboxie is limited with x64 system, until the v3.55 is released).

im using clearcloud too.

i think im enough protected. ^^

 

+1
I used to have this confing now I'm using Prevx Free and Comodo with the AV.