One of my computer guys really likes the latest version of Avast! And he ran some zero day malware tests on his virtualized machine. Avast did very well! (He said it only missed one back door Trojan.) He tested about ten samples.
I read through some of the comments, and I know that comments on a You Tube video take with a grain of salt, but there was a user or two that said that Avast still could do a better job on Facebook generated exploits. Matt, the reviewer, thought that the one zero day Trojan that Avast missed was a Facebook Trojan.
In all honesty, these youtube clips good/bad/indifferent are a waste of time as the sample size is soooooo damn small as to be statistically insignificant, which would invalidate any independent test. There is no methodology, how test was conducted, sample size how selected, validation of the test, etc. etc.
All these youtube clips seem to achieve in the forums is animosity.
So these types of things are best left to independent companies where the sample size is significantly larger.
But that’s not the perception of most viewers. If you need a “how it looks like”, there are enough screenshots out there. If you need to see the behaviour, then test it with EICAR.
Of course you can also see those aspects in a youtube video, but probably most viewers would get to conclusions about the quality of the tool from the “percentage” of malware caught in the video; and basing the evaluation on the result of these videos is inaccurate, at least.
It might be a little bit useful for some potential users, up to some extent. It is not an “objective” meassure.
I do not pay attention to utube vids but where else would someone go to see a range of AV’s in ‘Action’ so to speak.
Even install procedures would be of use to some and I don’t mean a series of ‘captures’ even with annotations.
I know about the small sample sizes and the difficulty with proper testing conditions. I just find it interesting to see Avast (and the competition as well) in action with different files to see what it misses and what it catches.
Yes, you would need the big companies and the labs to do the proper representative testing. But they don’t have the time to put out the videos for the average Jane/Joe user who simply might find the videos interesting to watch. (As I do.)
I think it’s very interesting to see how the AV companies work night and day, every day to keep computer users safe.
The problem is that youtube videos always focus on detection (which while important can not be determined by the tests in the videos) rather than what I think they should focus on, which is more about how they work and how usable they are.
