Microsoft not recommending their own Anti Virus

[erixx]

madness is to not install it, lol, i will never understand people with their pants down, haha

 

[Kaynar]

MSE is definitely the lightest free AV i have used. Sure, it doesn't protect you from clicking trash adverts on a website, it doesn't have integrated email protection and all the gimmicks, but when it comes to real viruses and threats which a user cannot avoid when using his brain, its as good as the other AVs.

A friend of mine has always used paid Norton and Kaspersky every year in the last 10+ years and always has had problems with viruses cause he just opens pretty much anything he sees on the internet. On the other hand, I've stopped paying 10 years ago, I used MS defender and now MSE and never had an issue. Of course you can tell me "you never had an issue cause your antivirus didn't detect it". My simple answer is that I never had a problem with my PC becoming slow from trojans, having DDoS attacks on my modems or some serious virus issue, while my friend with his paid AVs has had to format several times because of serious viruses.

 

[Deleted member 110753]

A friend of mine has always used paid Norton and Kaspersky every year in the last 10+ years and always has had problems with viruses cause he just opens pretty much anything he sees on the internet.

It's the proper of insurance companies to ask to pay when there is a risk...
The amount you have to pay is depending on your fear...

 

[CounterZeus]

No anti-virus is 100% safe. Been using MSE for a couple of years and never had any problem. It mostly comes down to common sense and some luck (infected network/external media) I think the last time I had a virus was on my old desktop which then still ran XP (and fixed with a custom Kaspersky tool). It was from an infected crack for testing a game (did buy it later on )

 

[Ikaruga]

MSE is pretty much useless, since it takes resources from the computer but protects against nothing except the "things" Microsoft knows about (which is already too late).

They had a very strong push some time ago when they probably reallocated all available resources they had for the MSE team, and it was actually getting very nice scores in antivirus test, but it was a very short time period.

To be fair with Microsoft here, every single wannabe hacker kid is testing his "creation" on Windows and defaults against MSE first if he is after computer users (note: nowadays mobiles are finally became more popular targets than PCs), so this is a war MS could never win, (not even if they would have a good product), because they are in a crossfire and also vastly outnumbered by every means.

 

[VulkanBros]

I seem to remember something about Microsoft buying Giant Antispyware and Gecad Antivirus somewhere in the early 2000..... i think they are Microsoft Security Essentials today....

 

[rhino]

I'm surprised Rhino hasn't chimed in.

I kinda got thrown out.
FWIW: MSE+Spybot (Original version still updates).
Just remembered: Adblock plus in the browser. Makes a huge difference.

 

[Steevo]

Every IT pro knows to use multiple layers to prevent infections and their spread, everything from OpenDNS that shows attempted connections or DNS lookup of known malware servers, a hardware firewall that has deep packet inspection and reassembly, blacklisting, end point AV and still using the software firewall, and last but not least informing users.


I managed a few stores as one of my job duties in Colorado, and between all that I almost never had infections on anything unless it was traveling salesmen and their laptops, but even those I usually kept clean with more restrictive AV and system settings.


I have tested many AV's and security suites, and can say most users are OK with keeping their system up to date, windows firewall, the built in NAT of their modem, and paying for a good AV, or using Comodo, Avast, MSE, or AVG, and as well Malwarebytes.

More dangerous users should have TDSSKiller, RogueKiller, Hijackthis, Malwarebytes, ComboFix and a paid subscription to a good AV, the new Norton is good from what I have seen as are the paid editions of most of what I already listed.

 

[remixedcat]

Also for a lightweight A/V I recommend webroot. 2MB RAM, 1MB install size, Runs in the cloud so no need for definition files that take up tons of space and slow your system down, Also since it does your system performance is not choked as much since the scanning is cloud based as well.

 

[DF is BUSY]

i'll stop using it when MS stops supporting it IMO


i mean its not the worst possible entry level "protection" you can get, considering MS hasnt killed it yet

 

[Arjai]

A little over a year ago, I talked my brother into using Chrome and WOT, With WSE, MalWareBytes, Chrome and WOT?

Virus free.

He is a complete noob, non computer age Vietnam Vet. I got him using a few simple tools, and blammo! No more trips to Fry's so they can scan his drive.

WOT, is priceless. Saved my butt, a few times also!

 

[remixedcat]

WoT had some drama a while ago and becuase of that it's not to be trusted.

 

[VulkanBros]

also for a lightweight a/v i recommend webroot. 2mb ram, 1mb install size, runs in the cloud so no need for definition files that take up tons of space and slow your system down, also since it does your system performance is not choked as much since the scanning is cloud based as well.

+1

 

[Frick]

MSE is pretty much useless, since it takes resources from the computer but protects against nothing except the "things" Microsoft knows about (which is already too late).

They had a very strong push some time ago when they probably reallocated all available resources they had for the MSE team, and it was actually getting very nice scores in antivirus test, but it was a very short time period.

To be fair with Microsoft here, every single wannabe hacker kid is testing his "creation" on Windows and defaults against MSE first if he is after computer users (note: nowadays mobiles are finally became more popular targets than PCs), so this is a war MS could never win, (not even if they would have a good product), because they are in a crossfire and also vastly outnumbered by every means.

I think you're meaning to say "antivirus", because this is true for all of them, more or less.

 

[Ikaruga]

I think you're meaning to say "antivirus", because this is true for all of them, more or less.

I can agree with the "less" part.

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/windows-7/julaug-2013/
http://www.av-test.org/no_cache/en/tests/test-reports/?tx_avtestreports_pi1[report_no]=133162

 

[remixedcat]

What the hell there's one called Norman like a Norton knockoff... LOL

Windows 8 results:
http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/windows-8/janfeb-2013/

 

[TheMailMan78]

There is so much misinformation in this thread it melts the mind.

 

[Frick]

What the hell there's one called Norman like a Norton knockoff... LOL

Windows 8 results:
http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/windows-8/janfeb-2013/

Naah, Norman is a norwegian company that's been around since 1984. They do a bunch of things, don't know when they made their first AV though.

 

[Mussels]

Also for a lightweight A/V I recommend webroot. 2MB RAM, 1MB install size, Runs in the cloud so no need for definition files that take up tons of space and slow your system down, Also since it does your system performance is not choked as much since the scanning is cloud based as well.

+1

cloud based AV Are no good for those of us with limited internet, or a virus that fecks with your internet.

 

[Melvis]

No surprise here ive been telling people this for yrs now. Now its even come from the horses mouth!!

I guess its better then not running a AV at all? but why use a "ok" antivirus when there are better free ones out there? just doesn't make sense to me There free FFS. Even bitdeffender now has there own free anti virus and bit defender is dam good, so go use it!!

 

[remixedcat]

cloud based AV Are no good for those of us with limited internet, or a virus that fecks with your internet.

Webroot has a system in place where it amps up the protection by isolating stuff more and other stuff:

Question: How does WSA perform when no network connectivity is available?

Answer: While WSA has the strongest protection when connected to the Internet, it provides significant protection when offline. A few thousand critical signatures are pushed down from the cloud for offline protection. The client remembers all of the files it's been told about to provide protection. The client further uses behavioral heuristics to block threats when offline and can even turn into a full "whitelist-only" mode. All files are set to monitor when offline - heuristics are applied in real-time and pre-execution. Each system modification is precisely tracked by WSA. Once the client is back online, if a program is eventually found to be malicious, every change that was made can be reverted.

Question: What is the average, daily Internet bandwidth consumed by the WSA BEP client?

Answer: Approximately 150KB.

Question: Some malware blocks all network connectivity. How does WSA BEP handle this challenge?

Answer: Because WSA runs at the Kernel level, it has the capability to circumvent any attempt to block its ability to contact the cloud, including bypassing the Windows API should the need arise.

Bandwidth Usage
Question
(1) I have an ISP that limits my monthly bandwidth usage. What does Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus add to my usage per month?* I have 3 PCs.
*
*
1:* The antivirus portion of Webroot SecureAnywhere uses an average of 650K*per day per computer for cloud communications, with a general range of 300K to 1.5MB.* So you're looking at about 58.5MB per month across three computers for the AV portion.
*

 

[Altered]

I know someone needs to quit searching porn and they wont have near the problems.

Ive used MSE on PCs for users with little experience with PCs and it has helped them. Make sure to set it up properly and a lot of the ID10T mistakes go away. Sure serious crap hits one in a while but I doubt any of the free AV will stop everything. Sometimes shit happens just hope your not in that less than 10% and make sure your stuff is backed up.

And no I didnt stay in a Holiday Inn

 

[Mussels]

ah i see, rather than upload the files its just uploading the hash and going from there.

kaspersky has a similar thing, but also traditional known bad files and heuristics.

 

[BazookaJoe]

i just installed mse yesterday. this is maaadness

Madness?....

THIS IS SPAAA aaaaoh forget it, that's been done to death.

 

[hellrazor]

Huh, I didn't know there was a user that was actually called Rhino, I was talking about Easy Rhino.