My Community Protection is bigger than yours

Having been going back and forth between ThreatFire and Mamutu which I think along with Prevx are very nice programs. It dawned on me that the Community Protection they offer have to differ to some degree in the that there has to be more users of one product than the other. Prevx has been around the longest and PC Tools is well known, but Mamutu is the new kid on the block and I'm not sure how well known Emsi Software is yet. Comodo will also soon get into the Community based arena with ThreatCast and I would think they now have a very large following. Of course I realize it all boils down to 0 Day protection and how well each HIPS app does it's job. But having used all the ones I mentioned I will say that each ran very well for me and that I liked everyone of them. I guess the question is. How important is the Community Protection some security apps offer and is it really that important? Please no bashing of any programs so we can have a nice discussion about this if some want. Thanks.

 

I would assume that the makers of freeware would have the largest communities. So Prevx and Threatfire would probably be the biggies of the moment...

 

I think comodo's ThreatCast has potential but it is very young and has a long way to go. i guess there is some kind of safe guards in place that monitor a community driven app to keep the data bank from being poisoned. as too witch one would offer better results over the other i would think the one with the most users but that could be wrong also.

very good topic you started

 

It's not the size but how well it's used, and of these contenders only PrevX boasts of being a stand-alone app. I'd say they rely on their user-base a lot more, re-act quicker and have less FP's as a result. The others will catch up in due time though. Just the nature of the biz...

 

Maybe, but ThreatFire is being used without an AV by some and PC Tools has to have a big Community base.

 

That's the key question, isn't it?

What is "community protection"? The term itself is a misnomer, as it doesn't offer any protection. All it does is to show you what other users thought about that program. And the reason for its existence is because a program has no ability to distinguish between legitimate alerts and false alarms, and would otherwise bombard the user with popups all day long without it.

ThreatFire doesn't offer "community protection" in the sense you seem to interpret it. It functions somewhat like NOD32's ThreatSense.Net and Microsoft's SpyNet do - all it does is report flagged programs back to Novatix, who then reviews them to see if they should be added to the whitelists of allowed programs or virus database signatures. In this case, it's a team of qualified experts who are looking at and passing judgement on the results, not a bunch of average, nameless users who quite likely know no more than you do; that is, if they know anything at all.

At the end of the day you'll have to decide whether the opinions of a bunch of anonymous strangers over the internet on the legitimacy of a program are useful to you, because that's basically what community "protection" is - a simple voting system that allows other users to potentially decide on the security of your computer via a democratic show of hands, irregardless on the quantity or quality of those votes. It's up to you.

 

Wow. Thanks for the detailed explanation solcroft. I appreciate it. Who do you think would have the biggest Community base though?

 

Why thank you. I believe solcrofts explanation may have put an end to it though, unless of course someone disputes what he wrote. Kees1958? LOL.

 

When I had threatfire (cyberhawk beta) the first thing I did was turn off the community call home stuff. That is the first thing I have done with any of this type of HIPS. I don't want a program calling home constantly...tattling...even if for a supposed "good" cause. If many do what I did, how does that affect the efficacy of this type of protection? To my way of thinking, only weak programs rely on the users to tell them what is good or bad.

 

Well if I'm not mistaken. Comodo relies on the user to tell it wheter to allow or deny, where ThreatFire usually makes its own decisions.