Why can't we just get an AV these days?

Seriously.. Is it really necessary to add so much bloat, so many features to an antivirus product? I miss the old days when we had a 'plethora' of AV's to choose from - and they were AV's.. All of this crap, and none of us are more protected, or safer as a result, are we? Sure doesn't seem like it!

Now they are;

Firewalls
Toolbars
Optimizers
Defraggers
Safe Search
Web Scanners
Mail Scanners
IM Scanners
Backups
Encryption
Spam Filters
Identity Theft
Vulnerability Scanners
Parental Controls

ENOUGH! My god.. Enough is enough. I installed Bullguard recently, and it ran like a pig on a fast quad core system. So I went in and disabled Spam Filter, Backup, Firewall, Mail Scanner, Optimizer, Vulnerability Scanner, and everything but the AV itself. Guess what? I check and see all of those services still running, even though they are disabled within the program. Seriously?

I enjoyed F-Prot mostly because it was an AV, and didn't pretend to be anything else. I respected them for that. But since it's basically abandonware, I don't see it as viable at this point. VBA32 was nice - it was an AV, and only an AV.. But since Kaspersky stole all of their talent(shall we say - hijacked the company), VBA32 is basically dead now too. So what's left if people want a simple, AV only product?

I've resorted to ClamWin+ClamSentinel, since I also run Appguard and MBAM, really all I want is a basic AV as a 'just in case', and that's about the only product that is still refusing to bloat itself out. Why do AV companies keep doing this?

Buy XYZ bloated AV, and get a free box of poker chips! WOOT! Come on guys, can we get back to the basics, and stop being ridiculous? Is there any company left out there in this field that hasn't progressed into the ridiculous?

~Copyright protected image removed~

 

Your screenshot is outdated as well.

 

Emsisoft
Ikarus
Forticlient
Microsoft

 

F-Secure Anti-Virus and Emsisoft Anti-Malware come lean as they are and offer great protection. I don't know about Panda Cloud AV free, but 90% of what you mentioned shouldn't be there as well. Bitdefender Free is stripped down as well, but it's hard to count that one as it somehow seems to be quasi abandonded.

With custom installation: Avast, Avira. Avast is really funny though. Without custom installation a prime example of bloat, yet it actually can be stripped down to be one of the leanest.

But I'm with you. In my opinion Kaspersky is a tragic example. Technology wise one of the best, if not the best, yet they force all of this unnecessary nonsense on you and you can just take it or leave it.

 

MSE, at least, is just an antivirus and nothing else: no "grime fighters," no toolbars, and no price-finder junk.

 

The toolbars is what i hate, you can't DL anything without them trying to jam one down your throat.

 

I don't think its going to get any better.

(1) Info Sec community is pushing to implement a layered security approach
(2) Programmers and IT are on board with this idea, except they don't want the hassle of compatibility issues across multiple software products (e.g. the push for all-in-one solutions). +1 customer ease-of-use, +1 cover our butts for not detecting 100%.
(3) businesses are on board because it means diversifying/differentiating their product/service line(s). +1 customers, +1 investors.
(4) businesses also like to drive the market by creating hype around "new" features like cloud integration for syncing and sharing or new URL filters.
(5) modular programming design encourages software flexibility and scalability, so why wouldn't businesses take advantage of this?
(6) advertising/collection/tracking: Heaven forbid we make it easy to avoid installing by accident or easy to remove.

The list can go on, but I'm sure you know most of this. At some point, you decide to develop your own solution or accept this fact and pick the lesser evil. As others point out, there are leaner options available and many installers have the custom install option.

 

Good Evening! Agree totally with your opinion...DoctorPC. Myself I have a preference for Ikarus and Emsisoft. Not only are they superbly engineered but both firms provide Wilders with excellent representation...Ziggy from Ikarus...and Fabian from Emsisoft.

 

Some have custom install but still you get greyed out stuffs, ads, upgrade button, social network button, etc... in the GUI.

 

First thing you get after you install Windows is you need AV, you need back up, you need ... i can't remember all the stupid notifications I have to disable after Windows install. Average Joe, after seeing a few messages like that, will believe everything.

 

Noooooooo!!!!!!

 

That, and some 'nag' if you turn stuff off.. Webroot gives you a warning icon that never goes away. Bullguard constantly asks you to 'enable' the other crap, and places the interface in an open position on boot. But yes, the greyed out stuff that won't go away = extremely annoying. Add to the list widgets, and other garbage.. Does anyone really keep Bit Defender and F-Secure Widgets around?? Or things like "Weak Password checker" In Bit Defender.. Game modes, Laptop modes.. I mean - really?

I suspect the marketing suits(clueless) at these companies have convinced the good folks there to add more bells and whistles, to make things 'flashier'. To add edgy sounding things, 'feel good' features that really don't mean much in the scheme of things. Webroot added that checkbox recently, forgot what it was called, 'Enhance your protection with Turbo-Threat' or whatever.. Sure feels good to click it, but do we really need to be told they added 'improved' threat detection? (fluff?) I mean who in their right mind would UNCHECK something that says "Improve your safety, save your children, mow your lawn!".. It's like this junk is added as as marketing hype, or to simply show it's there to give people a sense of things 'getting better'..

I miss the days of simplicity. BoClean, Ewido, VBA32, F-Prot, and many others. It's not that I don't understand complexity, it's that I feel it is entirely irrelevant, and offers no real benefit, and may actually hinder a product. Sometimes I won't if McAfee and Norton are driving the direction of this business. The more bloat they added, the more bloat other companies followed suit with. The 'cute' phrases, and feel good jingles these companies come up with are getting old.. "SONAR will protect you!", or "Threat Turbo Enabled!".. All of it seems so useless, and almost insulting to our intelligence.

All of this makes me GREATLY appreciate something like Appguard, where they left the garbage out, checked the marketing hype at the door, and focus on what matters, and what works.. Not fancy checkboxes that do nothing.

 

Most of these AV companies should be ashamed of themselves in my opinion.. It's become almost revolting. An insult to even have them installed.

But again, that's my opinion.

 

I totally agree with your opinion

 

Bitdefender Free AV is a clean one but its extra clean i.e they didn't added all the garbage but also didn't gave basic options, controls, etc.
I do find it good for average users, they never look into GUI. But it still needs couple fixes & development that sadly seems non-existent now.

 

Sorry...which icon is that?

Are you talking about Infrared?

From: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Webr...ology-Platform-Support-Interface-389339.shtml
Webroot Intelligence Network: http://www.brightcloud.com/platform/webroot-intelligence-network.php

 

Same here, most all new AV's are just full of crap ware ....

Running windows defender on 8.1 at the moment, with malwarebytes . Tried most of the so-called
top drawer AV,s ..... and they just very quickly grind my browsers and PC to a crawl ......

 

What, the clever phrases, fancy checkboxes, and massive half baked features haven't convinced you these are products worth your hard earned cash? Impressive sir, impressive!

 

Although I agree with the OP's premise, I don't think all the blame lay squarely on developers/vendors. Users of these programs and apps are increasingly turning to products that has every available feature, including the kitchen sink. They think the more options/features the more secure they will be. The developers/vendors then give them what they want, or risk losing them to other product(s) that has the sun, moon, and stars.

 

So this is like people that take a an allergy pill to fix an allergy think that taking 2 allergy pills will fix the allergy even better?

Do these people really exist? Does anyone actually think the half baked system cleaners in Antivirus Suites are actually worth a darn? I haven't met anyone that does, but surely they must exist to justify this rubbish? Is there really some guy out there with the Bit Defender widget on his desktop? Or someone that unchecks fancy marketing checkboxes that clearly must make a product perform much better if checked?

If they do exist - we're doomed brother, we're doomed.

 

All you do is bitch and complain about WSA with no proof Joe even asked you for scan logs many times so I would like to know the answer to Dermot's Question here: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2350292&postcount=17 for being a new person to Wilders you don't act like a professional IMHO it's more Trollish.

TH

 

Yes, do these people really exist?

Average users........they just know they need AV & they install it & all the added garbage gets installed. But average users are not those people as they dont know what all got installed, they simply know that they installed AV. And then they never open the GUI.

Experts.....surely not those people or.....some experts.........??

So who are those people?

 

Lavasoft Ad-Aware Free 11 could be what you're looking for, simple Bitdefender that scans files during download and on access.

Unchecking the three items in the toolbar install will prevent it from installing. I went with "Block Malicious Websites" only for now while I consider paying for the Personal version. The toolbar is a nicely behaved scaled back Lavasoft-purposed implementation of its Blekko origin.

The BD engine is the latest. It can be set to check for sigs every hour and it absolutely positively updates the latest sigs as BD rolls them out. In the last seven hours today I've seen 4 updates. I have consistently seen 5+ sigs updates a day. All verified by comparing the data in
-http://download.bitdefender.com/updates/bitdefender_v9/plugins/update.txt-
against the update.txt file in Ad-Aware's local plugins folder. In fact, there are times the local file is ahead a version or two from that BD link. Tho I'm sure that's got to do with BD updating the link itself.

And NO NAGS!

You CAN install it with Malwarebytes AM on your system. Just ignore the warning, continue and finish the "compatibile mode" install. Open the UI and click on the Real Time Protection "Install" in the Home screen - additional stuff will download and install. Reboot.

I'm concerned with the reputation this app will delete FPs without user intervention during manual scans. So I've disabled scheduled scans and will use MBAM and EEK for manual scan duty. And I hit the skip button immediately when the post-install scan started.

I've run LSAA with MBAM Pro 24/7 for a week without issues so far and don't expect any tho I've entered each others' paths in their exceptions.

FWIW, a quote from Lavasoft's Web site pulled from the December VB100 test: "Lavasoft Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ (Windows 8.1) Detection was very good indeed, especially in the proactive sets, closely aligned with other well-performing products...".

And just last week they got OPSWAT certs:
Ad-Aware Free, Personal & Pro Security: Gold Antispyware
Ad-Aware Free, Personal & Pro Security: Gold Antivirus
Ad-Aware Personal & Pro Security: Silver Antiphishing

(Note: For antiphishing, Free depends on the Toolbar Add-on for IE & Firefox for browsing only. Personal & Pro use the integrated Web Protection for all Internet connectivity (toolbar not needed unless you want the Safe-Search).

It didn't fare all that well with Rubenking (about mid-stream) but then again what does well with Rubenking?

All previous recent tests for LSAA are for versions 10 using Vipre.

As for the heavy/light thing, see my sig.

Cheers.

 

So these 'things' in AV's are really like the bloatware installed when you buy a new Notebook? Essentially they are 'there', but most people ignore them? Experts I know immediately wipe the drives on new PC's and install an optimized/tweaked Win8.1+. I agree though - who are these experts rejoicing over the half baked features bloating up these AV's.

Something to consider.. All of this 'nonsense' in products take development time. We can argue where those development hours come from, but it's probably the same general team doing the AV itself. That begs to question - how much time is BLOWN on the garbage that could have been spent on improving, and optimizing the core AV aspects?

PS: No Webroot logs because I haven't reinstalled that thing in weeks, and will not be reinstalling it. Twice was a enough. Nice picture, I can make pretty pictures too!