5 replies to this topic

[shadowx]

I came across http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive...nge/results.php just now and thought it would interest many of you.

I use Comodo which came joint first and is of course free And yes, the other first place went to another free bit of software

Interesting when you break it down... The test sample wasnt ideal in terms of free vs paid but that wasnt the intention of the tests. Nonetheless there are 8 free products and 37 paid for. 4 out of the 8 free ones came in the "excellent" group, with a rating of 90%+ the other 4 were paid software. This means that 50% of the free software was rated excellent where less than 10% of paid software reached this rating.

It gets better (or worse, if youre one of the people who think you need to pay people lots of money to stay safe) AVG, Norton, Trend Micro and Zone alarm all scored less than 70% (the exception being Zone alarm which scored 72%) AVG scored just 2%.... Nice... Real smooth.

Windows One Care scored an amazing 4% Way to go microsoft, still, they did better than i wouldve thought. This means that even simple attacks involving killing the antivirus processes or modifying them in memory defeated the software and rendered it useless. Bad times....

The lesson? Trust free software. Comodo scored 100% and IMHO is the best software out there, it also has combined antivirus.

I dont know the date of the tests but all were tested on WinXP SP3. The AVG and Norton results are accurate to 29th September 2009 so fairly recent and very sad.

If you are at all worried about your level of security download either Comodo or PC Tools Firewall Plus. Both of these scored 100% and i can vouch for the rating of Comodo.

Interesting.

[mahesh2k]

From that link i have found that, ESET's NOD32 is rated as 4% score. Man, it is in not-recommended zone. Never faced any issues with it but i don't know how this test is taken. I can't afford separate firewall on my computer so i guess have to go with that non-recommended ESET.

[shadowx]

Well like i said Comodo is 100% free for the personal edition.

The test results may be slightly outdated, but personally i wouldnt take my chances

[deadmad7]

mahesh2k, on Jan 12 2010, 01:31 PM, said:

From that link i have found that, ESET's NOD32 is rated as 4% score. Man, it is in not-recommended zone. Never faced any issues with it but i don't know how this test is taken. I can't afford separate firewall on my computer so i guess have to go with that non-recommended ESET.

I have also found no problems with NOD32, thats just weird that it got 4% , its probably bias. I was sure that the Avast will come first, but its not even on the list. I even put CRTL+F and still couldn't find it. Its probably the best antivirus ever!

[shadowx]

Avast is damn good, i read somewhere that it is the most popular free AV and also one of the best in tests (wikipedia i think....)

I Expect some of the data is outdated but personally i dont trust paid software one bit!

[BuffaloHelp]

These were internet security softwares. They were not testing the ability to block or handle viruses.

I don't know about the rest of you but I do not obsess with my computer being hacked by an outsider. It's only because I know that with my computer I don't visit sites that can potentially plant a way in. No visiting bad sites equals no virus, no spyware and no malware. I know that not everyone is in my circumstance.

I have a dummy machine which I use to surf into sites that is not trustworthy. I use this machine to download, visit and test various programs and sites. Once I am confident the program I downloaded is free form virus, spyware or malware I then transfer that to my personal computer. For those who cannot have two machines try VMware to run the session for surfing and regular for trusted sites only. Anytime I feel that my VMware session has been compromised, I simply delete the VM image and copy from the backup and start again. Very handy when going to sites that is loaded with ads that just penetrates your security.

With my personal computer I only visit very few websites, like Trap17 , email application sites and financial sites. Other than those I use the secondary machine. When I'm away from my secondary machine I use VMware. I try not to over protect my computer by loading too many security programs.

Knowing where you go, what you install can be just as effective as installing the best internet security program.