http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=9671.msg145131#msg145131
hello all! Just downloaded this product, but I don’t know is it worth to install it and is it fully compatible with avast! Any advices or comments about this software?
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=9671.msg145131#msg145131
hello all! Just downloaded this product, but I don’t know is it worth to install it and is it fully compatible with avast! Any advices or comments about this software?
We use this product where I work. Of course it was being sold to the customers by our company as a reseller. From what I have heard it seems to work just fine. We’re still installing it on customers computers.
Paulius make sure to post some screenshots from the program
This software is completely unnecessary since you can get Ad-aware, Spybot and Microsoft AntiSpyware for free.
I think so… ;D
Each of those companies make money in one way or another. Other companies also have the right to market their products. Pest Patrol, Sunbelt, Webroot etc. all produce excellent products, which deserve a fair evaluation, and may even be worth buying for some. For non home users, of course, there are fewer free options, and Pest Patrol may be a good buy. Let’s give the product a fair run.
And you can’t knock it if it’s free.
Who is stopping them from marketing? : It doesn’t make it any more necessary to buy. Lavasoft may make money from it’s pro version but Microsoft and Spybot give their spyware products away for free. That is a moot point. You don’t need to pay for anti-spyware products. Why tell people to waste money? It doesn’t make sense.
Realy I do not like pestpatrol it removes all my favirite prorams/tools that was linux bases and recompiled to windows. But it is safe for reading email online
CA seem to have worked on the false positives produced by Pest Patrol: This version didn’t produce one during a full scan. I tested Pest Patrol before the take over and I remember a few false positives.
Well dear friends,
It is here the same as with virus scanning not a single program catches them all.
One resident scanner and added compatible non-resident scanning non-resident and online is a good thing. With spyware and adware it is the same. Ad-aware and Spybot S&D etc does not catch them all. Some companies do not treat certain adware as malicious because there has been foreseen in an obscure uninstaller or an opt-out, and if they would there would be juridical consequences. Some do not consider some programs as such for various reasons. So a bit of extra scanning with eTrustPestPatrol or the free Spyaudit scan for a second opinion cannot harm you once in a while.
Just to prescribe a standard formula and say bluntly that in that way you are out of harms way is an oversimplified statement or it is a form of “educated” snake oil.
polonus
Right Spybot and Adaware do not catch everything which is why I recommend also running Microsoft AntiSpyware <-Free and Trend Micro Sysclean <-Free. There is no need to pay for anything. If all of these do not find it, nothing else will and you will have to resort to manual removal.
I’ve occasionally scanned systems with Pest Patrol and Spysweeper after running the scans I prescribe and they never find anything new. Actually that is not true, they occasionally find false positives.
The only snake oil is from people with no experience in these matters and does not handle any volume of end users. Which is not surprising that neither of you are recommending Microsoft AntiSpyware which has become more effective then almost all of them.
Webroot’s Spyaudit and Pest Patrol (even after CA) still give occasional false positives. Much more so then the free more effective scanners.
Well Mastertech,
It is a good thing that you are that positive, but what good is it for your end-users when they trust the Ad-aware, Spybot S&D and Microsoft AntiSpyware formula and they land with a hidden rootkit on their comps. How can you tell this then or do you explain this away as a false positive?
polonus
Polonus, do you have any idea how rare Rootkit infections are? I check for them all the time and never find any. Which hasn’t warranted me to add RootKitRevealer to the site yet. I’ve considered it but it is not a tool for novice users due to the complexity in properly identifying a true rootkit from a false positive.
There are many instances of rootkit infection reported on these forums.
However, as you say RootKitRevealer is not a tool for the inexperienced and the user will still need to interpret the information it presents, not to mention it doesn’t remove rootkit infection.
To date as far as I’m aware, only UnHackMe and IceSword (a relatively new Chinese program, recently available in English, that little is known about) actually remove anything.
I believe most of the latest review give the pay products the edge in detection and prevention of spyware. I’m particularly impressed by Webroots product at he moment, and I’ve seen it for a very good price recently. Being financially disadvantaged, I stick with the free products, and yes, I do recommend MS AntiSpyware.
As usual Mastertech, you seem to have a problem with simply letting people make their own minds up.
As to rootkits, perhaps the reason we don’t here about any is that they are so effective that AV’s can’t detect them. We see plenty of the FU type pseudo rootkits, believe me. I’ve tried BlackLight on some infected computers, and have found some hidden malware.
MS itself is taking the problem seriously enough to add rootkit detection to its Malware Detection Tool and AntiSpyware.
You can read different reviews and different programs will come out on top everytime. If what you are saying is true every single time I test them they would have found something new that wasn’t a false positive.
Rootkits are just very rare. Alot of the mentions on these forums are from inaccurate sources. I’ve checked the posts and you have regular AV scanners finding them. Those can’t be rootkits. I think the name “rootkit” is being inaccurately placed on other malware or they are false positives. The only way to detect them is with a program like RootKitRevealer or what is more effective, putting the HD in another computer as a secondary drive. Regardless the only real solution is to reformat if one is found.
I scan customer machines like this and never find anything but the usual malware. Running RootKitRevealer is not a bad idea, just make sure you know what you are doing. I don’t have much faith in the other applications out there as being effective to detect the presence of RootKits.
Frank as usual you have a problem giving accurate advice. People coming here need good advice not buy five programs because I don’t know the three free ones do the same thing.
My advice is perfectly accurate, if you bother to check the record, for it is exactly the same advice you give: Ad-Aware, Spybot and MS Anti-Spyware together give good cleaning. I’m simply saying that there may be other products worth considering.
Saying that I have recommended buying five products is not true, and not helpful to a reasonable debate.
For your information, AV’s detect the so-called pseudo rootkits but can’t remove them. These are based on the FU rootkit, I believe.
Fortunately there are some knowledable people who come here to help us out and we have recently been provided with some solutions by a rather accurate source:
msdirectx.sys isn’t a real rootkit, since it can be removed from the boot drive in safe mode. Real rootkits can only be removed from a bootable CD or in another system but you have no real way to know if you fully removed it. Which is why reformating is the only solution.
Malware that uses some rootkit tricks are not rootkits.
For now you need to use VundoFix in safe mode to remove msdirectx.sys (also known as Winfixer).
I believe that’s why they’re called pseudo rootkits.
Thanks for the link.
Check it out next time we see a rootkit virus that uses some rootkit tricks!
Hi FwF and Mastertech,
If I am right, and if not please tell me, the conclusion in the case of a real toolkit is, that you cannot detect it from the same system but from an non compromised system. And then the second conclusion if you have a real toolkit, you do not know to what extent your system has been compromised, and the only way open to you is reformat and make a fresh reinstall. If in this phase we are pretty helpless, there must be a way to prevent the toolkit to infect. What are the best ways for prevention? Or must we come to the conclusion that even prevention is not possible, and that would mean a more sinister situation. But a way of prevention must be possible, I presume. Comment please, consider reading this link first:
http://searchwindowssecurity.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid45_gci1086476,00.html
polonus