Best scan engine? Best Active protections?

Without including any HIPS programs, I would like to know which antispyare programs you all think have:

1. The best scan engine to detect and remove malware (list your top 3)

2. The best set of active protections or guards (top 3 again)

Bonus...Of the programs you list, why do you list them over others?

 

1.
SUPERAntiSpyware
AVG Anti-Spyware
Spysweeper


2.
AVG AS
SAS
That's it.

 

If you want an easy HIPS program, use Prevx1, the HIPS for housewives.

 

That's housewives talk and no answer to the poster's question.

Gerard

 

Best scan engines:
A-Squared
SAS
AVG AS

 

1. BOClean
2. SuperAntiSpyware
3. AVG AS

 

Hi,folks: These types of questions have often been very tough to reply to. Tons of people have been interviewed and the SURVEY SAYS this and that. And your AS is not one of those. Does that mean you are not using the best? You just need to trust your own judgement; ask yourself this question: has my AS ever let down? If the answer is negative, then you can safely shift those so-called best ones into your reserve corps. Until the really rainy days, they stay there put. I am happy w/ what I have for now, and I believe I have the best ones for myself. I think you do too. Good luck.

 

Ultimately people choose what they like, but that doesn't always make it the best. And the fact that your program may have never let you down could be misleading. Has it ever been put to the test?

There may be no sibgle "best" program. But what I was getting at was:

1. Which program has the highest detection and removal rates and
2. Which non-hips based program pevents the widest array of malware.

I do think that these 2 questions can be answered by experienced people who have really tried many products and put them to the test. I am not really quialified to answer these questions, but I do feel that others in this fourm are.

 

Is she a housewife?

 

1.& 2.

1. AVG AntiSpyware (great detection, almost none fp's, a little bit slower scanning speed, scanning from context menu does not work always)

2. A-SQUARED (great detection, rather fp's, a little bit faster scanning than AVG)

3. Avira AntiVir PE Premium (or Classic ) (AntiVir is not probably the best antivirus tool only yet great antispyware. Very reliable overall malware detection tool )

 

As you can read from the replies so far there are a variety of choices. Your good machine is no exception, you need to TRY various ones and monitor the system's/program's behavior whether its acceptable to you or not. The choices above are popular and good decisions because they work well for those who PROVED them a success.

Scan Engine? Another toss up, depends on your system's make-up and how much it's willing to accept without affecting performance.

My choices are SAS and AVG7 plus A2Squared which i use the latter On-Demand only. SAS has excellent qualities plus it is a very efficient REMOVER of malware should something actually gain an entry but you reference "Active protection". SAS Pro incorporates that, even AVG7 has a "resident" guard that runs active after every reboot. Spysweeper i can't offer anything on because i been far removed from it long ago and see too many positive results from even the 2 i posted about to even consider it again.

There are yet other very dependable choices yet to be mentioned and i'll let those users share their opinions of them for you.

 

SAS is the product that intrigues me the most. What I have read about SAS is that it has a feature that does not allow malware to reintall itself after removal. Some threats reproduce when removed. That is a very nifty feature if it works. Have you actually tested this feauture against real world self replicating malware?

SAS presents an image of being simple, yet effective. That is appealing to me. The Spysweeper type products with all the fancy guards and bells and whistles were once appealing to me. But I think that those toys come at a "resource cost" which I am not willing to pay. I now lean towards products that are effective yet resource efficient.

 

SuperAntiSpyware (SAS) did not detect a few very common trojans that AVG AS, A-SQUARED and Avira detects without trouble so I did not get what's the catch with this software.

It seems to me that SAS is a little bit overrated on this forum, but it is just my 2c.

 

Which common Trojans were detected by those three A's?

Gerard

 

TR/Dldr.Small.ddp.28 for example.

 

In terms of active protection – as some have stated before – AS/ATs don’t pick off much malware in real time. I have no idea why that is – but it often seems that if your AV or other primary security product does not detect it, neither will your AS. Later, your AS/AT may find it in the scanning process, but they don’t seem to stop them on the way in.

I have full protection versions of Ad-Aware SE, PestPatrol (CA-AS), Ewido (AVG), WinPatrol, and SAS. I like them all (sort of), and I occasionally run them all concurrently while surfing in some of the rougher neighborhoods of the internet. Even with all of them running, the slowdown is less than you would think…

Ad-Aware is pretty much useless

WinPatrol is more of a passive security product, but I love its ability to tell me the details of everything that starts and is running in my computer, and the timeframe when it was installed. This is the greatest educational security product I've ever dealt with (the Plus version).

Ewido (AVG-AS) was the champ imho. The future is in question. The product does not seem to get the attention that it used to.

PestPatrol (CA-AS) is often dismissed or forgotten in this forum. Some dismiss it saying it has all sorts of false positives. This is false. And PestPatrol finds things that nobody else does. They update all the time, they've updated the software multiple times in the last year…. This is a solid product. Right now, if I had to give up all but one AS, I’d keep PestPatrol.

SAS has great customer service, gets lots of attention in updates and product development, and has cool little features built in. This one may become my favorite soon.

A couple of times, I’ve installed a piece of spyware in my system** to see which programs find it. The last time I did this, here is the order in which my different systems found it:

Immediately found: McAfee, PestPatrol, Trend online AS

Found within three days: Ewido, Symantec AS (on the Yahoo toolbar), Kaspersky online scan

Never located before removal: A2, Ad-Aware, Panda online scan, WinPatrol, Bitdefender online scan, Spybot S&D, Windows Defender, SAS (this must have been an aberration as I think SAS is a quality product – I just purchased the lifetime updates version of SAS)



**I work with some people who test some anti-malware products for the government, and they will occasionally give me the sample and instruct me how to lodge it…. But I emphatically state upfront that I know nothing about the in’s and out’s of testing malware products and there is certainly no scientific basis in my dabbling or any expectation that my playing around with one sample of malware has any real reflection on any products mentioned.

 

Which specific "trojans"? Did you submit them to samples AT superantispyware.com for analysis? I can also provide hundreds of samples that A-SQUARED, AVG, Avira, etc. don't detect or even see that SAS detects - the bottom line is NO application can detect EVERYTHING on a given day due to the rapid creation and deployment of these samples/infections.

 

Anytime you find or receive something we (SAS) does not detect, submit it to samples AT superantispyware.com and we will analyze it and update our definitions usually (depending on our current sample load) with 24-48 hours or less if it's high priority. We appreciate when users take the time to submit us (and other vendors) the samples - this helps protect users worldwide.

 

That really reveals nothing - was it a cookie, registry key, file? Important information to be able to determine what was actually detected Please send the samples to samples AT superantispyware.com and we will analyze them and update our definitions as necessary. Is this trojan in active circulation, or an "old" trojan that is not in widespread circulation? We (SAS) focus our efforts on zero-day infections that are in actual widespread circulation.

 

1.-2. - MWAV, SuperAntispyware, A-Squared. I use MWAV Free as a file scanner.

MWAV - an improved all-in-one Kaspersky engine, that does not need more comments.
SAS - AS with best detection and with an outstanding support, SAS guy is allways around.
A-Squared - it is hard to choose it, Ewido was a good one, who knows, if it is still gonna be.

 

As I wrote, the trojan named by Avira as TR/Dldr.Small.ddp.28, named by A-Squared as Trojan-Downloader.W32.Small.ddp and by AVG AS as Downloader.Small.ddp.

No, I did not.

Do you submit them as a malware samples to the Avira, AVG or A-Squared?

Well, I think it is in active circulation becouse you can find it in almost every crack files on internet (most often as crack.exe in .rar file). Just search for crack or serial for Kaspersky 6 (or SuperAntiSpyware), for example, and here it is. OK, may be it is not the most notorious malware you can find on net but it is flaged by AVG AS and A-Squared as "High risk".

 

Most people that submit samples submit them to all vendors - there are lists available (here at Wilders) with all the submission addresses.

If you interest is in helping other users, then you should always submit samples to the vendors if they are not detected - that helps protect all Internet users.

No single product can catch everything on a given day and by users submitting the samples it helps everyone.

 

AS anyone can plainly attest to here in this forum, SAS's founder goes to great lengths to accommadate "ALL" end users beit free or paid versions. You have an issue of concern, SAS the local representative here will be jolly-on-the-spot to review and offer help. Someone tell me what other AS goes to such extremes.

Time for another dark brew now (german dark), total satisfaction provides many comforts. Go with SAS and you're in the mainstream of PC security innovation, not to mention good company too