PcMag Review of KIS 2009

The controverstial PC Mag team has just reviewed KIS 2009. Score 3.5 out of 5

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2326991,00.asp

As per PC Mag, the cons in KIS 2009 are
* Weak Anti-Spam
* Frivolous Parent Control
* Issues with installing/cleaning on Malware Infested system

Now I gotta agree with first two, but No.3 is a surprising.
Can anyone confirm, if really KIS 2009 is a choker on infested systems ?? If yes, let hope for MP1

Thanks. (Peace)

 

...And pigs can fly

Yeah right...

...Using an alpha version.

....Sure, when testing using a 100 Mbps Broadband connection before installing it and with a 40 Kbs Dial up after installing it.

I've used it on several computers and never had any problem if a full uninstall of the previous antivirus was performed. I bet he didn't even know about that.

And by the way did he test in automatic mode?

He really has no idea of the true power of KIS 2009.

PcMag Tests are just stupid and messed up. But I have to admit that Neil J. Rubenking has a lot of fantasy.

I stopped buying PcMag some time ago and will never touch it again.

 

C'mon, it's amusing... This one is my favorite from this article:

Amazing... simply amazing. How come KAV/KIS 2009 doesn't come with it's own atomic clock which automagically corrects the system one? And guess what, if you change your system clock to 10 years ahead, you'll get an expired license - how useless product KIS2009 is...

D'oh! PCMag

 

I can't believe KIS 2009 only gets a 3.5! In his review of NIS 2008, he mentioned that it also had a weak anti-spam and parental controls, but gave it 4.5/5.

 

Nothing new.

"REVIEW DATE: 08.04.08"

 

Do you really believe they have to throw in an atomic clock to detect tampering with the system time?

 

To prevent false positives? With the "wide" choice of timezones in Windows products, with the frequency of timezone data updates by MS etc., given that the default synchronization client is plain broken in Windows, then yeah - pretty much - yes. Otherwise there's ton of legitimate reasons why people need to mess with system clock manually multiple times a year. Plus you know what? If you want to prevent similar issues, you prevent limited users from doing such actions, instead of attempting to do pathetic "system time tampering" heuristics.

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.win32.systemevents.timechanged.aspx
Who would of known that an event (for programming) is triggered when the users changes the system time? By no means is it heuristics.

 

Have you really read my post and tried to understand it? The above link is plain irrelevant since you have no way of knowing whether the user-triggered time change is legitimate or not (and as noted, there's ton of legit reasons why users need to change the time manually, starting with incorrect timezone info and ending with clock skew that Windows fails to correct.)

If you don't want users to mess with system clock, you disable that functionality for them, you don't implement stupid heuristic workarounds for unsecured systems into third-party products as the PC Mag "expert" tester suggests.

P.S. This debate got totally off-topic now.

 

What is stupid about the reviewer recommending a standalone parental control software?

 

The completely pathetic reasoning for such recommendation. And please note - I'm not arguing parental control abilities of KIS, in fact I have no use for such stuff. I'm just saying that the review plain sucks, the guy's unable to keep consistency even in two successive sentences.

 

Rubenking's reasoning for recommending a standalone parental control software is that KIS's can be fooled by changing the system clock, which obviously is not a good thing. I don't see why that is a pathetic reasoning.

 

Right; you skipped the entire debate above. I'm not going to repeat myself over and over again.

 

Of course, other steps then just detecting a system time change and taking action has to be done by the developers. If other parental control software and protection systems can detect system time tampering, why not Kaspersky? Certainly Kaspersky would be fine if it was protecting against kids that didn't try to counteract it or search for ways around it; but PC Magazine's criticism of the Parental Control module wasn't biased or ignorant.

 

I'm not talking about the debate here, rather I'm talking about the review itself. The review recommended that the time scheduler be turned off if one wants to use KIS's parental control or use a standalone parentol control software.

 

OMG. Because guess what - the correct way of doing such things is: edit group policy, Computer Configuration - Windows Settings - Security Settings - Local Policies - User Rights - Change the system time

See - if you give a wannabe "restricted" account Administrator/Power User privs, then you are a moron and you'd better go back to reading some basic books on Windows administration, instead of blaming Kaspersky or someone else for your own stupidity. Administrators control the machine, not vice versa. It's not third-party SW job to prevent them from doing so. And the PC Mag tester should know better than testing similar stuff under Administrator account.

End of story.

 

You've gone from "it's impossible/magical to detect time tampering," to "there are many legit reasons to change system time," and now "you're a moron if you give the kid administrator privileges." Sure, it seems like a parent concerned about the content being displayed would setup a limited account, but it's just another step-up in self-defense for Parental Control.

 

There's no self-defense for Parental Control and/or KIS when you log on with administrator privileges - you can just go and disable it or heck even uninstall the product completely, parental control issue solved. People that have no concept of security shouldn't review security products and rate them - and that's the whole point.

 

But Neil is supposedly an "expert" of PC Magazine.

 

Again, this review in no way should mar KIS 2009's repute as it holds no logic whatsoever. KIS is an excellent security app and the testing methodologies applied boundaries on ridiculous.

 

I agree this review is... half-assed. (Well, that's PC Mag in general) However, I do believe it was fair for them to test for "self-defense" existing in other Parental Control products.

 

I hate to interrupt ...
But in my usage of KIS 2009, the phish protection is really weak. Seriously, just open a browser (without in-built phish protection). Goto www.phishtank.com and try to open the latest phish sites listed there.
KIS 2009 blocked 3/11 in my test, so I gotta agree with Neil on that.

Same for Parental Control. Its weak in comparison to (say) NetNanny. Point taken, PC Mag ( But that time change bit was LoL !! Serious credit loss to PC Mag. doktornotor has nailed that point hard !!).

But my doubt, is about their remark that KIS 2009 was not upto the mark in removing malware infested system. Has anyone else observed this

 

Not that I have ANY love for PCMag, but I have a license for KIS that expires in 2010, and I took it off my machine permanently. Simply stated, my browser slowed to a CRAWL using it, and only on certain sites. Anandtech's forum, this forum, and about 2 dozen others I visit every day or so. It'd literally take about 2 minutes to load the main page of this forum.

Oh, and for the record, this was on 20/20 FIOS.

 

Use Firefox 3 and it's protection to build an extra layer against phising.

 

I went to Anandtech to see it for myself and everything blasted into my screen in less than seconds. Forums, tests, everything. And I have KIS2009 set on max. With the heuristics for instance.