If people come here with questions about trojans and such, we see a lot are advised either to use Ewido or a-squared.
Recently I found out that Ewido has been acquired by Grisoft, and is not the same Ewido anymore like it was? Is this a good development? See: http://www.cio.com.au/index.php/id;1321149369
Why are all these nice independant programs and tools bought up to be “mangled” by the so-called forces to be. Always the excuse is either “diversification”, “scaling-up”, but in almost no case it is a benefit for the end-user. These people (or should we say “sheople”) just have to live with it.
Your link reports Avalanche Tech. Group is now the
"distributor" of the new Grisoft product Ewido for "Down
Under"; it was already in that position for AVG. Does that
mean AVG FREE was not available for those "Down
Under" !?
I think this is the same as "Licensed Clone", as used in
the "Legitimate/Licensed Clones" section of the "Rogue_
antispyware" site of Eric Howes, which shows many
such "clones".
Well one thing about it Polonus, if Ewido is not the same as it once was in being able to detect malware it’s better than nothing. Yes, the good free stuff we have been used to using is slowly being gobbled up by the big boys. Hopefully there will always be a fair share of freeware programs that will help protect all of us. Have a nice day.
It may not be the same Ewido as before, but what other alternatives are there ?
Why do they do it, simple I think to try and increase market share by having a captive audience in the shape of existing Ewido users. They may then try to make them switch to Grisoft products or services, etc.
Not to mention financial reasons:
The ewido anti-spyware 4.0 is available from Avalanche’s website: avalanche.com.au for $42.95 per user. For users of previous ewido versions, the upgrade is free of charge.
Now at what point will Ewido become a paid option for all previous users. I think the writing is on the wall as many mentioned when this buyout was first announced, we will have to wait and see.
The same could be said of MS buying up Giant’s anti-spyware and turning it into MS Defender, at a stroke MS stopped it supporting older OSes like win9x and ME, XP only.
A certain program I have on my computer contains adware. Although the company that provides that software claims it doesn’t have spyware, adware is spyware, adware spies on our systems to better target us with advertizing. I tolerate the adware because I want to use the program. I removed the adware, but it wouldn’t work without the adware, so I reloaded it.
My point is ewido, Windows Defender, PestPatrol & Yahoo Anti-spy used to detect the adware in question, but now they don’t. ewido stopped detecting it even before Grisoft bought ewido.
Many spyware & adware producers have badgered malware detectors with lawsuits & threats of lawsuits. This has been much of the cause of weakness in good software.
I read about ZoneLabs was sued because ZA blocked something. The website I read it on tested the situation and said ZL was wrongly ruled against by the court.
I prefer for to make my own decision about what’s on my computer, not the decision of a lawsuit.
Well based on the link provided by polonus, someone is trying to sell it (that is where the quote came from), so currently using the links we have been giving to people, it would appear to be free. How long that remains so is the question someone will want to recover the cost of buying out Ewido and future development. Perhaps it will stay the same as Grisoft offering a free version of their anti-virus.
i suggest to check Spyware Terminator , it’s developed by Czech team located in Brno (same city where Grisoft HQ is located)
it’s free, there is no spyware/adware w/e someone people trying to claim about because of past history of Crawler …
(ie u can cut it off complete access to internet and use manually downloaded definitions - in case You paranoid)
team of programmers is very fast and incorporating anything usefull users mention on suggestion forums …
program UI is very similar in functions and control to what was old Windows AntiSpyware beta 1
Note on SpywareTerminator: We originally listed Spyware Terminator on this page out of concerns that Crawler, the company behind the product, had established connections with IBIS, a well known adware distributor responsible for such adware programs as Wintools, Websearch, & Huntbar. Although we found no problems in our initial testing with Spyware Terminator, and while the vendor itself announced that it was exiting the adware business (1), we decided out of caution to impose a three month probation period before we would consider re-testing and, if warranted, de-listing the the product from the Rogue/Suspect list. During that three month probation period we monitored the behavior of IBIS and Crawler. At the end of the three month probation period we re-tested Spyware Terminator, again finding no problems serious enough to justify listing the program on this page. As the vendor involved has not been involved in the distribution of adware for many months, and as the program itself exhibits no problems serious enough to warrant mention on this page, we have decided to de-list Spyware Terminator from the Rogue/Suspect list and can no longer regard the program to be "rogue/suspect."
Note: not to be confused with Spyware X-terminator from Stompsoft
Crawler, LLC - company developing Spyware Terminator and other products was formed by IBIS, LLC. IBIS, LLC was in the past developing screensavers and toolbars which were distributed by partners in various bundles - and the partner distribution chain was producing bad reputation. Early in 2005 company realized that this is not the way they want to go and completely revamped their business strategy, shuted down their old products and partner driven distribution chain.
Crawler, LLC was started with clear desk and clear goal - focus on users and quality of products. All products and distribution processes comply with industry-leader guidelines (incl. Google’s and Yahoo’s) and often go beyond them. Other antispyware and antivirus companies recognized that new products are something completely different and do not detect us… And best of all we have very positive feedback for products like Spyware Terminator or our online platform which is powering not only Crawler.com but also Inbox.com portal and includes great features. All people working on new Crawler products are really proud of them and I believe that they do great job.
Let me know whether this response addresses your issues. I agree with you that this issue is important and I want to make sure all our users have a chance to understand this matter.
ANSWER (8/8/2006 3:34:54 pm):
Thank you for your interest in Spyware Terminator.
Dear Spyware Terminator user,
Yesterday we added a Trojan whose filename is similar to the filename of a Avast antivirus file to our database.
We made mistake when we were adding the new file to the database. The problem has already been fixed.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and hope you will stay with us.
Thank you for using Spyware Terminator. Please tell your friends and family about us.
Sincerely,
Your Spyware Terminator Support Team
It took 2 days from the time I reported it till the acknowledgment and fix.
Weird that they work on file names and not file content to identify the trojan ??? Had the filed been scanned looking for signatures then I doubt it would have been picked up.
It also makes you wonder (well certainly me) about what it does to remove associated registry entries, etc. if it is only using file names to detect it could reap havoc to the inexperienced user who takes the detection at face value.
Hi Damien :