What's the Best Anti-virus?

MSE is not high on the list because Microsoft has nothing to sell,
No pay for versions so why compete with other utilities that do,
There is no juice to be squeezed and no point in competing for revenues,
I respect everyone's choice,
But I prefer a windows and internet explorer friendly suite if there was a pay for version I would jump on it in a New York second
So ask yourself does ie of any version Crash for no reason
Not mine ever,
Cheers.

ThrashZone said:

MSE is not high on the list because Microsoft has nothing to sell,
No pay for versions so why compete with other utilities that do,
There is no juice to be squeezed and no point in competing for revenues,
I respect everyone's choice,
But I prefer a windows and internet explorer friendly suite if there was a pay for version I would jump on it in a New York second
So ask yourself does ie of any version Crash for no reason
Not mine ever,
Cheers.

You know my position on MSE. I still install it because it plays nice with the OS and other apps. But I cannot defend against the argument that MSE keeps things stable because it does so little. The only thing pushing me away from MSE is stuff like Conduit. If MS would move the threshold to include those PUPs (like Panda does), then I could see sticking with MSE.


I think that you followed along while I was playing with that one infection for more than a week. You saw the videos where MSE could not find/remove a simple unlocked file. It's not like this particular infection made tons of copies. There was just the original file (which deleted itself) and the one copy (which ran).

Worse than not being able to clear the infection was MSE claiming that it had done so. Never telling the user that the issue was still there (unless the user looked at the log files). The user figured that the issue was still around once the FBI warning took over the desktop and task bar.

edit: this thread might be relevant to AV stability issues.

MSE is at the bottom because it is designed that way. According to MS anyway

Microsoft: Security Essentials is designed to be bottom of the antivirus rankings | Security | News | PC Pro

They say they also only make it detect the things that it's users actually run into. They get that info from those that allow MS to collect the info. I was expecting people to stop doubting these AV test results when MS themselves said it was true.

A Guy

UsernameIssues said:

Dallas 7,
Could you point me to a document written by or endorsed by AV-Comparatives that defines what they consider to be a virus?

edit: I should add that I looked (and failed to find such a document) before asking you to look. I'm not baiting for an argument, I really want to know how people/companies from all over the world can agree on what a virus is - on what it does.

Yes well User I think you have very valid point and one that I have said all along that any malware has to be made just in the same way that they might design a fuel injection system for a car and other see that system and copy it using the original owners design. Therefore the original design is produced for a certain amount of time before another manufacturer can get going with that system.

Now to me malware follows much the same path and until the AV programs no matter how good they are see and recognize a piece of software or whatever (because it is creeping into the manufacture of hardware parts too) as a malware then it will do whatever damage it can before a deterrent is put out by the AV programs to nullify it.

I am no expert as to how much malware is produced each day but I believe it is a huge amount but at the rate that malware is produced I really don't see any AV as being infallible because it has to be read and ID'd before pronouncing it as malware and adding it to the definitions listings.

To me it seems to be a huge task for any AV to recognize malware as it is put out and would have to assume that the process must be automated in some way because otherwise one would to have a staff of enormous numbers to go through the rubbish each day.

But like I also said we could debate this subject till the cows come home and you will never get any absolute agreement on which is best. The best AV is the operator

AVs don't have to depend 100% on definitions, there is also heuristics. Behavioral analysis. This can result in more false positives as some programs look suspicious based on the way they work. Whitelisting digitally signed programs used to be a fix, but now even malicious programs can be digitally signed

Because of these issues a layered security approach is especially important. It's certainly possible some new variant can escape detection by the whole phalanx of security programs, but one or all will soon add detections, or community/cloud detections will flow out to all users.

A Guy

A Guy said:

AVs don't have to depend 100% on definitions, there is also heuristics. Behavioral analysis. This can result in more false positives as some programs look suspicious based on the way they work. Whitelisting digitally signed programs used to be a fix, but now even malicious programs can be digitally signed

Because of these issues a layered security approach is especially important. It's certainly possible some new variant can escape detection by the whole phalanx of security programs, but one or all will soon add detections, or community/cloud detections will flow out to all users.

A Guy

Yep I know mate I was just quoting definitions after the pick ups were made however that is done.
Personally I am under no illusion that if someone wants to hack into any specific machine/s they can do it and there is no such thing as a perfect defence system.
But like Dallas I go by what the Comparatives show even though they do not show them all and I have used a few different ones over time and just find Kaspersky ahs the best of both worlds in being reasonably safe and also cheap to run. Having said that I still pick up stuff with the on call scans.
I said it before and again this is a subject that so may take so seriously and debate for far too long when there are better things to be discussing.

I don't know about testing but this gives a good idea on what it is and therefore I reckon it should give an idea of how they are tested for.
Computer virus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia