Absolutely not, Avast aren’t writing articles stating that ‘all’ free software can’t protect you. They are promoting the paid option and stating what you get in doing so, now if you have those areas covered no problem, they aren’t trying to scare avast free users into paying (like the recent ZA fiasco).
You/they can’t compare any stand alone product against a suite as we all know you need more protection in the form of a firewall and one comes with your OS. We also know that it is at best basic or there would be monopoly lawyers climbing all over it.
They are saying this for no other purpose than to try and sell their products and boy in this case does their name match what they are doing ‘playing with semantics,’ to serve their own ends. Give the potential customer a head ache and sell them an aspirin.
But not by completely trashing a complete sector of the market (free AV software solutions). Avast promotes its own products, it doesn’t rubbish everyone else’s.
Sure. I’ll never be on a rubbish side.
But, really, they’re trashing the concept that you can achieve full protection with free antivirus.
I think antivirus companies can’t say that either.
This is one of the reasons I like Kubuntu, No AV or other security software required and there is an excellent chance that the software you do want is going to be free of charge and free to do with as you please, if I understand the GPL correctly.
However, to answer the question: No, you don’t need to pay to receive acceptable protection, in my opinion. Paying means getting more protective features and settings options.
Symantec's response points out that independent tests already exist. "Norton is included in a variety of independent, third-party tests from testing labs like AV-Test and AV Comparatives. We encourage Comodo to contact these testing labs if they are interested in having their product included in these tests," the company said.
Then the Comodo’s CEO said:
Those independent tests they claim show other Free AV products doing really well, in some scenerios, better than Norton. So if those are the tests they believe in, then why are they spreading misinformation to public?
Personally, I avoid suites (free or paid) for pretty much the same reason I don’t get cable TV/phone/internet “bundles” for communication. I get all my phone services from Bell, cable TV from the cable company, and internet from an regional independent ISP with an excellent reputation, simply because each of those companies started out specializing in one of those fields before expanding out into the others, and I feel that their original field is what they’re best at.
The same with my defense “arsenal” (see sig.) – in each case, I’ve gone with a product from a supplier who (starting out, at least) specialized in a specific kind of protection. The only sorta-duplication is with SAS and MBAM (free, on-demand-only versions) primarily because while they both protect against essentially the same types of malware, they do so in different ways and using different databases.
my opinion is: buy an av=waste of money when mbam and avast are here to safe your pc from daily/most complicated malwares ;D,however if you are rich or you can spend 20 euros to buy avast or mbam it’s a good idea,but kav costs 100 euros,are they making fun of unprotected ppl? ;D
Your questions are realistic. I experienced it, we had their suite at work, one day in February in the early years of this century they got the wrong certifications in, it brought all of their security to a complete standstill almost, the av no longer functioned, everything became as slow as molasses from a very resistent sort, it was a complete disaster. So I experienced what you are on about, and that cured us from any longer using “the top notch av solution of our days”,
No, not really. Look, some people has already bashed the free antivirus when they failed with the phrase: “this is what I get when I pay nothing… I got an infection. Now I need to spend 200 bucks on a technician…”. I know that this could occur with paid also. And none would be responsible for the damages.
I know an exception (and I’m opened to other ones): Comodo pay back 500 dollars if a computer get infected in United States with their software installed in a clean computer. http://antivirus.comodo.com/clean-my-pc.php
That is a nice guarantee. Restrictive on some levels, as I suppose such a deal must be, but this part of agreement would make he hesitate most; If a Comodo support representative cannot
connect to the computer because of the malware, the limited guarantee does not apply.
“There is a very, very big gap between what antivirus does and the threats that are being delivered today,” Hall said at the time. “If you are only relying on free antivirus to offer you protection in this modern age, you are not getting the protection you need to be able to stay clean and have a reasonable chance of avoiding identity theft. That’s why free antivirus is not enough: you need in-depth layered technologies, which only come from the more mature paid suites” (David Hall, Symantec’s product manager for Consumer Products in Asia-Pacific, 2009).