Several Anti-Virus Products Tested with Shocking Results

http://www.csoonline.com/article/493119 ... 2009-05-21

Very interesting indeed. Those of you that are loyal to one Anti-Virus may want to change products after viewing the results. Personally I don't use any Anti-virus software on my home machines but I am reckless and wild like that

Man, AVG was pitiful. Some of those were quite surprising. Not at all what I expected. Avast was much much better than what I anticipated. Great link. Thanks.

Holy Cow! In a way I feel somewhat vindicated. For years I've been saying to people, "Don't trust anti-virus programs. They slow down your processes and are unreliable because they tend to be purely reactionary. The best protection is good browsing habits."

Like the grinch-man, I don't use anti-virus software and haven't for years. I've never had a machine that had to be taken down for viruses (knock on wood).

Yeah I guess I'm going to stop using AVG and find something else. Although I have to say I liked the price...

I use Symantec enterprise at work and at home. Honestly, though I'm like you guys. Don't really need it based on "good browsing habits" however, if attacks like Gumblar continue to increase, downloading what you expect to be a legitimate pdf or Flash file could be enough to put your computer at risk.



I think professionals well acquainted with the internet and vulnerabilities are much less at risk then clueless home users (especially those with kids who will click on virtually anything). However, I don't think even the safest surfer is totally immune anymore. About a year ago I recall clicking on what I believed was a safe link from a Google search and got nailed so fast, my anti virus was shut down before it could react and it took me a solid day to get rid of all the crap that was instantly installed. Fortunately I knew enough to disconnect the Network connection immediately or it could have been much worse as it had already established a remote connection with the malicious server.

All I know is that I was able to better use my computers when I quit running and worrying about anti-virus software and just used the computers correctly and with a little common sense.

If only I was the only one who used my computer...

I am also in the group that does not use any antivirus program. I haven't for 10 years and have been fine because I feel as long as you are competant in what you are doing and have safe browsing habits you will be fine. Two reasons I don't use one is because I feel its a waste of money for me to buy one, and second they consume uneeded resources and time that I would rather have myself. I think those programs are best for those who have unsafe browsing habits, are not experienced enough with how the internet works, or who are not able to identify what is real or isn't (such as popups from websites that say they have 1000 viruses on their computer and they need to download their malware to make things better).

I still remember in the past when making an appointment with Comcast (one of their connections outside was causing issues) they informed me that I must have an antivirus program on the computer before the technician looks into your internet connection problems. I was tempted to explain to her why its not needed, but instead just said "sure, no problem". A large percentage of users probably do need that on their computers (including some of my relatives).

You know, I bet active scanning types of anti-virus software don't seem like such of a performance hit these days. I remember my first computers with 300-600 MHz processors and 32-128 Mb of memory would slow to a crawl when I tried using anti-virus software.

Even the first laptop I quit using anti-virus software with was kinda slow with a 1.3 GHz processor and 256 Mb of memory. It came with Norton when I bought it and I remember having been around here at Ozzu for awhile feeling a little safer just getting rid of Norton when the subscription expired. It had been ages since Norton did anything for me anyways.



It's a truely wonderful thing.

For a while I never had an anti-virus, but then when I went to school they require it for a while to be able to gain access to the internet. However, they started to run into problems with cisco clean access agent and not allowing people to connect to the internet even if they did have an anti virus . After that they removed the restriction. I kept the anti virus anyways because I figured if I was on a "public" network of that scale someone was bound to screw up. Which someone did, about finals week, first semester internet was up about 20% of the time. After we got back from break internet was up for almost everyone except a few people that had a virus that spread accost the network. Almost all of which didn't have an anti virus.

Thanks for the link and comments.

That test wasn't thorough enough but I still stand behind trend officescan and avast.

How was it not thorough enough?

I kind of wish they would have tested Antivir, I've used that in the past and am curious how they say it ranks against others. My old job, we had Symantec Enterprise but we just weren't happy with it at all. That one did seem to slow everything down during scans. We wound up switching to TrendMicro because of the speed increase and because we were able to integrate it with our Watchguard firewalls for a gateway antivirus and the spam filter worked a whole lot better.

Hello SYNO/TW, joebert, and kcOtma, and thank you (and all the others) for the most useful comments on the also useful link analyzing AVs.

But I write you 3 to ask for your permission to use your good and clever signatures as I show them below? However, SYNO/tw, why "dominatrix"? Could I change it to read: "dominator/dominatrix"? Thanks.

I haven't had the chance to write my signature, but it will probably be this one (among many others I have in the same vein) at the end of this reply.
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"The web is a dominatrix. Every where I turn, I see little buttons ordering me to Submit." SYNO/TW, of http://www.ozzu.com/

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but the whining wheel gets replaced. joebert, of http://www.ozzu.com/

I have a blog, I'm so ashamed. I can't believe I gave in to the trendy side of the internet. At least I'm not on facebook or twitter! kcOtma, of http://www.ozzu.com/
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The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites, or women for men. Pulitzer Prize Winner Alice Walker "The Color Purple"