Janice Chaffin, president of Symantec’s consumer business unit, says: “Freeware vendors have created a false perception that free, basic security is enough to protect you from today’s online threats. The reality is, free is not enough. It’s like wearing a light windbreaker in a snowstorm.”
A USA TODAY survey of 16 anti-virus companies shows that no-cost anti-virus programs generally lack important features such as a firewall, website health checks, automatic updates and customer support. Meanwhile, full, subscription AV suites continue to get more powerful each year.
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The common denominator: Each promotion — whether it be for a free basic version or free trial period or a free infection scan — seeks to convert users to a paid subscription.
The idea that a paid suite can 100% protect is just as naive as thinking a free program can.
S.S.D.D. from this company, and it must work,
as they keep growing and buying, ad infinitum
Counterpoint, though slightly off-topic… time is money. I can assemble something as good or better than a paid security suite from assorted free programs. But every separate program becomes an additional thing to troubleshoot should something go wrong, a separate company to contact for answers.
to the question of this thread: …of course not, even then it doesn’t mean that I’m promoting free software, which I don’t btw ;D
Just mentioning that paid software seems often bloated with what I call “non-features”…stuff meant to make the customer feel better about the product and his daily browsing … anti-phishing anti-fraud anti-whatever buttons are legions in paid solutions.
It depends if one knows how to protect oneself. If this is over your head then a commercial all-in-one solution pack could be an option, just like when you cannot do it yourself, you have to hire someone to do it for you, and that will cost you money.
A combination of some free programs can deliver a free all-in-av-solution with which you can even be BETTER protected, for instance a combination of Avast, Microsoft Security Essentials (or M.B.A.M. or S.A.S) and Immunet Protect are free and for the home user that does a bit of surfing and reads mail all the protection one needs. Some can add in-browser protection as well as NoScript and RequestPolicy for the Mozilla browser or the easier solution for Google Chrome: NotScript extension, NOREF extension (and optional Better Pop-up Blocker, Flash Blocker & Click & Clean), OK and have a FW installed, and fully patch and upgrade allways, both OS and third party programs,
avast provides free antivirus for sure. But Symantec guy is saying that this is not enough. This is basic protection.
So, you need something more. And it could be not free…
Yokenny needs to read the Symantec declaration or better the full article linked at the first post ;D
By the way, I’ve read both articles of Vince (avast CEO) in the blog yesterday
No, it’s me… believe
I’m discussing this Symantec guy declaration:
"Freeware vendors have created a false perception that free, basic security is enough to protect you from today's online threats. The reality is, free is not enough. It's like wearing a light windbreaker in a snowstorm."
He's not saying that free antivirus is worse than paid or that free antivirus does not protect you as well as the paid ones.
He's saying that basic free security is not enough.
Isn't he right?
Well reality is a strange animal. Depends how you look at the issue. What is full protection, it is non-existent in this world, best protection you can get is when you know how to protect yourself decently. What is the best way to do that? - using layered protection. Some rather have avast free than TrendMicro’s paid version. If you know how to bastle a combination of layered protection as I sketched above, who needs the paid all-in-one bloatware av solutions. Well those that click after abything that is clickable, have no notice of what Internet security is about, rely fully on an automated process of paid protection solutions to do that for them, and what will be the end result they will remain vulnerable as hell, because they do not know what to do with the applications, do not know what to do with the settings, do not know about what threats they are up against, etc. etc. So they pay and get fooled. This makes it a complete different discussion. AV-protection has to be educated and users have to grow into the habit and then it does not cost much to be nearly fully protected…
When I have been to this forum here, did a couple of malware cleaning routines myself, have read an awful lot from security savvy people how to protect I can make a complete full layered anti-malware protection and that won’t cost me a Eurocent. I experienced what Norton brought me when they launched the wrong certifications to go with their scanning, it was a complete disaster and enough for people to never want to use the Symantec product(s) again. McAfee will block everything the admin sees as undesirable and therefore can be rather user-unfriendly, so I am completely protected with my combination of free programs and free tools: a free firewall, avast free, the free version of MBAM or SAS (or both as on-demands), SpywareBlaster, Windows Defender, in-browser security extensions, the only suspicious things I saw in recent years were some ad-tracking cookies, and those I cleanse at closing the computer with some Cleansing Programs, by the way these are also free,
Total bulls**t, as YoKenny’s image depicts. It would only be true if you couldn’t get an all free solution in individual components, which is easily achievable. It is Symantec/Norton that are peddling a false perception that the only way to be protected is to pay.
Avast has a great free anti-virus solution and there are many free firewalls that are more than capable, there are many such free security applications. The only issue is the user has to choose which is best for them and some are lazy and get a suite and for the most part that means paying.
All they are out to do is scare people into buying Symantec/Norton Suite, this is pure marketing BS to try and steer people away from free solutions and hopefully to them.
@ Tech
I suggest you refresh your memory with the Blog article by Vince about free products.
+1
Totally and utterly agree with all of the above posting in this thread, it is just scaring non-wits into buying Symantec’s all-in-one paid version, the only difference these scared users feel is in their wallets,
Well, I’m using AIS and I don’t think it fits this definition of “paid all-in-one bloatware av solutions”. Sorry.
Ok, the user habits changes a lot the security that could be achieved. But this is not the point here. Like you say, it’s a complete different discussion.
But you’ve tried to define what is fully protected and listed some kind of software.
Indeed, you can achieve all of that using different applications together.
But this makes the Symantec guy’s declaration something right, i.e., that free basic protection of antivirus is not enough.
I agree with the thesis that just a single resident free av-solution is not enough to have full “layered protection”.
I would state that using a full security suite and have parts of it disabled (because it works better ???) is giving nearly the same overall results of the total free resident solution.
I also would state that if you’re aware what layered free security suite to select from free components this can be/mesan an advantage over the single all-in-one suites, because you have a smaller vulnerability window (varying detection spectrum), the various products detect differently and over a much broader scale of malware- so decent free resident av solution, a nasties blocking solution (SpywareBlaster), specific anti-malware solutions (MBAM, SAS, Windows Defender), temp and other cleaners like ClearProg, in-browser security extensions, probably an in the cloud solution" like ImmunetProtect and you are done, learn a bit of SafeHexing and update and patch fully(use Secunia’s solution to that problem or SecBrowsing extension in GoogleChrome for plug-ins and you are ready to go without a fear to have missed something. The firewall I would have is the Windows Vista one (make it dual way) or I used ZA free,
and not to forget make XP SP3 more secure with MS’s EMET tool, it is great,
…seriously, we all know here that one can be perfectly (i.e. as well as possible) for free, with a free protection setup matching or even outperforming many paid solutions.
So free basic antivirus protection is not enough.
Tech, are you trying to underline again that Avast firewall should be free (in your opinion)? ;D
…as David mentioned, there are indeed very good free firewalls for those who wouldn’t be ready to cough some cash for AIS. Symantec is just promoting >>> Symantec.
ps: on a side note, they acquired PGP, and I’m wondering what they’re gonna do with it, especially considering that some of it can’t be sold (to customers). Not talking about GNUPG but PGP itself that includes basic free functions inherited from Phil Zimmermann’s work, free fucntions that were always free in all PGP versions…
… anti-phishing anti-fraud anti-whatever buttons are legions in paid solutions.
