What is http scanning ?

VB does real-time tests (to get a VB100 award, an AV should catch 100 % of ITW malware on-access and on-demand). AV-Test.org and AV-Comparatives.org only do realtine tests to evaluate runtime-only modules (such as behaviour blockers or on-execution-only sandbox analysis).
Using equal settings, real-time detection should be the same (or higher) than on-demand detection.

 

That makes several antivirus programs look a lot better !

 

Sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say. Could you re-elaborate your sentence?

 

The VB100 award means apparently more than I thought.

Quoting you:
"Using equal settings, real-time detection should be the same (or higher) than on-demand detection"

The antivirus programs generally do well in on-demand tests, so based on the quote above, real-time protection should be good, and not as bad as I thought (in the proactive/retrospective tests all or most AVs detected less than 50 % of the viruses, except Avira).

 

Got it, thanks
One example of the real-time scanner catching things that the on-demand scanner miss is malware inside installers. Most AVs have a poor support for installers (Inno, NSIS, etc) so there's a high chance that an on-demand scan of a given file may result in a false negative. When you execute it, the installers extracts the individual files and here the RTM can detect/remove the malware components.

 

But why are the on demand scanners so poor? Time was when they were excellent. All one needs is an excellent on demand scanner so why is that so hard to find these days?

 

Huh? The problem of packers/installers/archives support was always present.

 

How about the secret tech. they are working on? Think they will add it to their products like most vendors are doing?

 

What secret tech?!
Are you talking about engine?

 

Yep, and I read somewhere they were working on something new---don't remember much.. Hell could've been something else other than McAfee??

 

Well, it is off-topic, but I think I could answer you as well as adding a bit of knowledge about http.
The new engine is due to come out from around June-december, and will enhance detection.


Also, http scanning has blocked a great many threats EVEN before my page was loaded, so the resident scanner didn't need to try to heal it. It may have failed, but thanks to http, it didn't have to.

 

Does McAfee have http scanning or not ?

I believe you stated earlier (somewhere) that it did not have that feature.