Has The Antivirus Industry Gone Mad?!

by
Anonymous Coward
in security on (#4KQB)
"We have seen a concerning trend that is about to spiral out of control: Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) are further on the rise. What's even more concerning is how they are spreading. After big vendors as Oracle (Java) and Microsoft (Bing and Skype) started bundling, now antivirus vendors have joined the game. We did research on some of the most popular PUP practices among the freeware antivirus vendors, and the results are quite disturbing.

PUPs want to get on your computer to make money off of you"

http://blog.emsisoft.com/2015/01/17/has-the-antivirus-industry-gone-mad/
Reply 9 comments

pipe-vertizement (Score: 1, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-03-09 23:30 (#4KQX)

Emsisoft is an anti-virus supplier -- they offer a 30 day free trial, but no free-forever version.

"Potentially" (Score: 0)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2015-03-10 03:13 (#4M04)

I think "theoretically wanted program" makes more sense to me. In theory, someone at some point thought that some one would want the program. Although in the case of superfish, I really have to bend reality to come up with some potential use of that crap.

You just shouldn't use free anti virus programs.

The article is biased (Score: 5, Informative)

by engblom@pipedot.org on 2015-03-10 05:54 (#4M4Z)

The article is written by Emisoft, a producer of a antivirus/antimalware suit. Through this article they want to look better than competitors. Some clean free antivirus solutions were omitted from this article because then it would not drive people to Emisoft.

Microsoft Security Essentials: done (Score: 3, Informative)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2015-03-10 18:14 (#4NM4)

Any friend/relative's windows computer I get any access to get MS:SE
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security-essentials-download

And then I remove anything else from Symantec, McAfee, etc.

Re: Microsoft Security Essentials: done (Score: 1)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2015-03-11 18:28 (#4QYB)

MSE is possibly the one exception I would make to "no free antivirus". But I'd leave Symantec on, if they had it. Its not as bad as it used to be with resources. If they have it and maintain a subscription to it, that's fine by me.

I would try to remove McAfee, however unlikely the success of that particular operation may be...

Re: Microsoft Security Essentials: done (Score: 1)

by entropy@pipedot.org on 2015-03-13 22:48 (#4X53)

Yeah because Microsoft can be trusted for security. It's not like the pitiful security model windows utilizes is their fault or anything. It's almost like trusting the virus industry to provide antivirus products.

Re: Microsoft Security Essentials: done (Score: 1)

by genkernel@pipedot.org on 2015-03-19 21:51 (#59CH)

MSE isn't really that good at dealing with PUP though.

I've found doing scans with Malwarebytes, but NOT keeping it running in the background to be rather effective and unobtrusive

Yes (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-03-11 05:49 (#4PKA)

This is not new. They tripped over the edge of sanity years ago. Next question.