Just got this email, one year 5 devices for $34.99 instead of $119.99
Bitdefender Total Security 2019 5 Devices / 1 Year $34.99
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dosada on 31/07/2018 - 21:43 bitdefender.com.au (540 clicks)
Last edited 01/08/2018 - 01:19 by 1 other user
Last edited 01/08/2018 - 01:19 by 1 other user
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stackable?
Yes, if you leave them in the box
anti virus works? ant them virus themelves
Am I the only one who disables/deletes all anti virus/ windows defenders software?
Every time someone posts an AV deal, there's always a bunch of comments about how AV is useless and you shouldn't use it.. which does nothing but harm the less tech savvy in our community. Does everyone need AV? No, there are plenty of people who are well versed enough in safe browsing habits and common sense that they can likely get away without it. However the vast majority of people SHOULD be using AV software, but get turned off it by tech savvy people who think others are as well equipped as they are to defend themselves.
Most of you probably aren't in a position where you get to see the damage malware causes on a daily basis, but if you were.. you wouldn't be waving people away from these products.
And there's only one person who talks up the need for non-tech savvy to have AV software installed…. ;)
Cyber crime in Australia affects more than 6 million people every year, and costs us in excess of 1 billion AUD. I'm just trying to do my (very) small part to protect some of our community before they become victims and I have to assist them as part of my day job. It's a horrible experience to go through and is easily avoided.
Getting an email saying “pay off Your debt with an iTunes card” won’t be solved with AV software
Most AV packages today don't just include AV. They have DNS servers that block unsafe domains from even loading, browser extensions for anti-phishing and blocking unsafe sites, as well as heuristic detection for identifying previously unidentified threats. Although not as common in AU, some include identity theft protection as well. The core components of the products will still protect you against threats like Ransomware, which is a serious issue at the moment.
AV vendors also offer guidance when you're a subscriber. So you can actually ask someone whether that email you received about "paying off your debt with an itunes card" is legitimate. If it isn't legitimate, the AV vendor can then block it automatically for the rest of their user base with a couple of clicks.
The idea that anything that isn't 100% effective isn't worth doing is ridiculous. Someone can throw a brick through one of my windows and get into my house, but I still lock my doors. The goal is reducing your attack surface.
@Praeto: I guess I just prefer performance (of the PC) over possible protection
Most people I help with their PC's have all these software installed to help 'protect' their PC. Yet their PCs are still infected and run even slower by having software that is supposed to help
If you're helping people with their computers, you're probably not the demographic that needs AV. I don't personally use it on my machines either, but I've definitely got it installed on my parents machines (and it blocks something weekly).
As for the people you're helping, no AV is perfect. No one outside of AV marketing departments actually believes that it is. If these people are still managing to get infected even with AV though, can you imagine the kind of cesspool their PCs would be without that software? It'd be non-stop ransomware payment screens 24/7.
Sadly there is often one outspoken naysayer in an office that convinces them to be less pragmatic and results in them getting smashed by something that would otherwise have been tiny. Certain anti-AV comments above being a great example.
The majority of these will not be prevented by virus scanners or antimalware apps etc.
Unfortunately it required education technology such as email.
Education is important, but it also has its limits.. at which point automated tools are important. I can tell my pop never to follow links in emails he receives or open attachments, and to only go to the links directly via his password manager. I can't tell him to monitor his outbound network traffic for hidden command and control connections, watch for DLL hooking or one of dozens of other behavioural giveaways that security products monitor for. He's the demographic that these products are aimed at, not people who understand computers well enough that they can rebuild them every couple of months.
I don’t understand how people don’t think it’s necessary to have an AV installed. Do you guys only visit news.com and weather.com?
Nope, pretty much go on a lot of sites that are swimming with 'nasties' and never have any issues with my computers at home.
They don't run AV, and then assume that they have no problems because they don't see anything obvious happening on their machines.. As long as I don't visit a dentist, I can go on believing my teeth are perfect! :)
The people not running AV tend to ignore the fact that rootkits have been around for decades, and that their entire purpose is to remain invisible. Ransomware doesn't really make sense anymore when they can just install a rootkit and a coinminer on the machine and let it slave away for them without the user knowing.
I don't know if you know this, but most viruses are unknown before they are known. You probably have virus/malware on your machine, and your antimalware doesn't know about it, and by the time it's updated, it won't be able to remove it 100%.
I reinstall windows from a base image every 3-4 months. I run the built in windows defender which has been proven to be very effective compared to paid for services, while not being as resource hungry.
Only people who pay for AV software assume anything, and it's assuming that they are protected.
I know my method is not foolproof, but I am not kidding myself like many others are.
I honestly don't understand what point you're trying to make.
You seem to be against AV because it has no value, but you run Windows Defender on your machine… which suggests you see some value in running AV? Otherwise why not disable it in the registry completely and save yourself the resources? If you don't want to pay for AV, Windows Defender is absolutely a great alternative, no argument. If you're willing to pay for a product though, you're usually purchasing more than just a basic AV product as part of the package. Additional services like DNS servers, web site review and scoring, identify theft monitoring / protection, and free access to services make the paid products a good option. A couple of the vendors even offer guarantees that if you get infected they will remedy it for free or give you a full refund on the product.
It also completely disregards the fact that the demographic that these products are made to help, aren't people that can comfortably reimage their own machine every 3 months.
Option 1 - Purchase AV. It stops 95% of threats without any issue and provides additional protections and services beyond a basic AV. It includes an outbound firewall, so if anything does get on your machine, the heuristic detection of the AV will pickup the outbound communication and be triggered, even if it doesn't recognise the threat. It may also provide secure DNS services, and safe browsing facilities to lower the risk of infection. The product provides you with a button you can click if you ever notice your computer acting up and an expert will remotely diagnose your machine and remove any threat if found (without you needing to do anything). If it can't be removed for some reason, you're guaranteed a full refund on the AV product, so you've lost nothing.
Option 2 - Use the built in AV that you trust so little that you need to format your machine every 3 months. If you ever get infected, you might as well just go ahead and format ahead of schedule.
If you value your time in the slightest, surely the outlay for an actual AV product pays itself off just with the time you save reimaging your machine every 3 months?
@Praeto: I never said there is no value to AV. I am just saying that simply having AV doesn't make you safe. I wouldn't want to trust my data with another company just to get AV, it's just another security whole/flaw/data breach I'm opening myself up for.
If you use and turn on and actually pay attention to all those services as a basic user, then I can see value in paying for AV.
Option 1 doesn't stop 95% of all threats. It might stop some of the known ones through certain avenues, will not be able to protect against everything. These apps don't stop certain activities anyway, like adding extensions to browsers etc etc. I mean really, like I said, they offer a good base of protection, but they can only go so far before making your machine and computing experience a bunch of pop up's and security questions.
I do value my time, and I have no time to deal with constant AV popup messages.
Also just FYI, re-imaging my machine takes none of my own time - I start a process and walk away. This is def not for most people. But I am just aware of tricks virus/malware/software are capable, and AV can't protect against most.
OnlinePred… I don't know what to tell you.. I do this for living, and you're incorrect. Perhaps you haven't used AV in a very long time and aren't actually aware of how they actually function these days.. or maybe your entire experience is with free products… I don't know. What I can tell you is that the amount of customers who become infected with any given AV product is a percentage of a percentage point. The amount of customers who simply can't be helped if they do get infected is low three digits per year (almost always ransomware). The signature based detections that you seem to think are all AV does makes up at most 1/4 of their functionality. The heuristic detections that identify new threats are far more important these days, and all the work that goes into keeping the customers from dangerous web sites to begin with is a key focus. Most of the paid products have very few popups (and most can be turned off), and the alerts are only in service of informing the user of something they need to know.
The extensions you mention are either actively blocked by most products, or if they're not considered malicious, they're classed as "potentially unwanted programs" or something similar and the vendor will remove them for you if you ask. AV DOES protect against most malware. The only thing I see AV vendors struggling to find solutions for is the rising issue of fileless threats. Beyond that, there isn't really any category of threats that AV have any particular problem defending against.
@Praeto: Can you please list the AV that does monitor against browser extensiosn? Avira, bitdefender, defender and AVG do not - these are the only ones I have purchased or used. I am genuinely interested. Because the most I got is - you may want to un-install these. I also found that none of these actively protected me against having an old Adobe Pdf reader that was un patched. On a technical you are also giving admin rights to an app with more security holes in it that is trying to plug other holes….
You probably know a lot more than me I have no doubt at all, but doing a masters in security a year ago has made me much more aware of how attackers think, and the way defenders (users) think. Our final assessment was to get access to a Win 7 machine that was up to date etc, the only guy in the class that did it, was able to use a flaw in Norton where he was able to create a new startup app running as admin (norton was admin). Anyway was good fun and possibly applications made by humans have come a long way since if you can't break them.
AV will treat a bad browser extension (that is legitimate malware) like most other types of malware and remove it. The reason for the confusion is the “potentially unwanted programs” category which many of the browser extensions fall into. The short version is that “PUPs” aren’t technically malware, as there are plenty of consumers that are willing to accept what ever dodgy stuff they’re doing as the price for using the legitimate features of the tool. This puts them in a grey area where the AV vendors would really like to remove them, but half the user base doesn’t want them removed.
Usually these PUPs will still get writeups / removal tools on the vendors web site and their support will remove them for you if asked.
Also no, most AV won’t check your product versions to see if there is an unpatched product on the system. They’ll focus on trying to stop it before it gets that far. It is something support will check when determine the attack vector used. That’s more a feature of a vulnerability scanner. McAfee is the only AV product I’m familiar with that has a feature to automatically update out of date software to address this.
As for impenetrable software, it all breaks eventually. I just put more faith in the software that’s been targeted non-stop for 20+ years. I figure we have at least half a chance with that! :)
@Praeto: I remember when we ran McAfee at work sometime around 2010, and an update to mcAfee deleted svhost.exe lol. Had to rebuild all the machines… Then a few years later an update turned off the active virus scanner for many weeks without anyone noticing. Good old days!
@OnlinePred: Pretty much all the old guard of AV made an update at some that disabled a lot of their installed client base in a similar way. I even remember about mid 2005 when there was malware that used Nortons AV as the attack vector.
Speaking as a former network security consultant, if you don't run AV on Windows your an idiot. Good habits will not save you unless you are paranoid about security and everywhere you visit is equally so. If you do harden your system to be sufficiently resistant most useful software wont run because Windows application developers are lazy. If you run Linux/Unix (includes OS X) you can almost get away with just being sensible … for the moment.
…you're* an idiot :)
Thanks, coming from you that's the highest compliment.
You're…………………………welcome :) ;)
All it takes is a legitimate site accidentally running malware infected ads to catch you out… like Forbes did in 2016.
Sites also get cracked all the time too. If they are not totally on the ball it's easy to become a delivery portal. I remember an office taken out by the images on a prominent german car brand website.
They obviously weren't running the latest windows with security patches!!!!
@OnlinePred: It was a while ago but these days being up to date with patches is just as painful. Microsoft retiring SMB V1 in the Creators Update broke all sorts of core business applications.
Windows Defender ∞ Devices / 1 Year Free