WSA Shares PCMAG Editors' Choice Award

But what else would they be doing but hiding all the infections they have to be getting according to the tests? If you have several million users on Webroot, and several million users on any other given product, and there are X many complaints about infections a day from another product with a 99% detection rate, wouldn't it make sense that if Webroot only has 92% like a test claims (8% failure compared to 1% failure), then there should be eight times as many people complaining about infections.

In fact, with pretty much every other product, you can see infection complaints along the lines of relative failure per million users. So if two products have a 98% success rate and one has 1 million users and the other has 2 million, the higher-used one has about twice as many complaints. If one has 96% and one has 98% and they both have the same user base, the 96% has twice as many complaints. That means to avoid complaints, you either have fewer users, or fewer failures per million users.

Webroot still has users counted in the millions (after all, the product checks in to do its work at all, so they have a solid daily and ongoing count), so with a high failure rate, they should have a HUGE complaint rate. But they don't have a huge complaint rate. Not even on forums they can't be accused of deleting posts on.

So why, with millions of people using Webroot, are there so few complaints about infections? We know that with the claim of a high failure rate, there should be dozens or even hundreds of complaints per week, but they are very much lacking.

 

not saying that WSA is cloud, one is infected, all the users are immune to it quite rapidly.

 

Techfox1976 "So why, with millions of people using Webroot, are there so few complaints about infections?"
McAfee and Norton have millions of more users than Webroot, so it is going to be impossible to say how good a product is based on your hypothesis. How does it work, one complaint for Webroot will be equal to ten for Norton ?

 

OK, your point of view, but it’s not just that; it’s the accumulation of several things.

1. Remarkably few reports of infections by WSA users on Forums
2. Wilders posters who are IT professionals and who have customers using different AV products are reporting that while those using other AV products from time to time get infections (rate of infection varying of course from one product to another), they have had virtually no or in some cases even no reports of infections from their WSA users
3. Webroot reporting that their support lines have gone ghostly quiet since moving over from their old products to their WSA products (OK, maybe they are just fibbing )
4. And my (and others’) experience of having got infections several times too often when using a couple of top AV brands but since changing to Prevx(->WSA) in late 2006 have not knowingly had a single infection.

Well, someone may have an alternative explanation for all the above but, given my experience (see last point), I choose not to take too much notice of the negative tests and prefer to remain with WSA.

 

Muddy3,

Hats-off to you for your four-point summarization of "The WSA Experience". I couldn't have said it better myself...

 

Close. That would be the case if they had equal failure rates and times number of users. If Norton has ten times as many users and an equal failure rate as Webroot, then yes, you'd expect to see ten reports for Norton for every one for Webroot. But if Webroot has the claimed failure rate of ten times as much failure as Norton, then Webroot and Norton would have the same number of reports.

Though I guess it's a downside that Webroot even changed reports to Shades of Gray, so to speak.

Norton -
User: I'm infected!
Support: Download and run this program and this program and this other program and then run this and this and send us logs from all of them.
User: It's not helping.
Support: Okay, do this stuff now and this stuff and grab a log and send it to us and run these three programs and send us that too and get samples for us.
User: Okay, after three days, I think I've got it gone.

Webroot -
User: I'm infected!
Support: Please send us your license key code.
User: Well, I was infected, but it's gone now, but I just want to make sure.
Support: Yep, looks like you're fine.

 

May I also Add the following:

Paid Service or Volunteer from a Forum:

FREE SERVICE from Webroot Support, Webroot Employees that know how WSA works:

 

Just LOVED that analogy!