
Symantec: it’s dangerous to rely on free antivirus - vaksel
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2009/07/04/symantec-its-dangerous-to-rely-on-free-antivirus/
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michaelawill
Standard executive talk. He's oblivious to the fact that many of the free
offerings have higher detection rates than his companies products while at the
same time have a much smaller footprint than any product they will ever make.

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wyday
Higher detection rates is not better. Higher detection rates just means more
false positives. This is a very bad thing for small companies releasing
desktop software.

Plus, have you used Symantec Endpoint Protection? It uses 8 megabytes of
memory. Tiny.

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MoeDrippins
> Higher detection rates is not better. Higher detection rates just means more
> false positives.

Awesome, so the machine I have with _NO_ AV software at all with a detection
rate of 0 must be the bestest!

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wyday
That's obviously not what I meant. Read my comment below:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=688388>

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pj
Symantec is in my list of top 4 worst software manufacturers in the world
along with Intuit, Hewlett-Packard, and Adobe. I would never -- ever -- trust
my computer to Symantec.

Their software is bloated, it's buggy, it believes it owns your computer and
it fails at doing what it is supposed to do.

Choose AVC or ClamWin and only download and install software from trusted
sources. Disable autoplay.

It's just like the real world, avoid dangerous sources. If you have sex with
random people and don't protect yourself, you're more likely to get a
biological virus too.

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vaksel
Don't forget to add Norton to that list of crappy companies.

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pj
I think Symantec bought Norton.

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antirez
I'm not a Windows guy and I can't confirm this, but my windoze-guru friends
always say one thing to people asking for advices:

 _don't install Symantec products_

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MoeDrippins
Anecdotal, I know, but a few times I've UNinstalled Norton on my father-in-
law's machines, replaced with either AVG or Avast, and stopped its incessant
HD activity, speeding it up quite a bit.

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kellishaver
From what I"ve seen based on the number of customers we have who bring in
computers so riddled with viruses that they won't function (about 500 so far
this year in a town of 15k people), it's dangerous to rely on Symantec,
because about 90% of those computers have Norton anti-virus installed on them.
The rest are McAfee or nothing. I've never seen a computer with a free
antivirus program like AVG or Avast as badly infected.... not saying it
doesn't happen, just that I don't see it. My guess is that a lot of people who
know enough to hunt down free antivirus software probably no enough to fix
their computer when something does happen.

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pj
I would suggest this is partly due to the fact that computer users who know
about and install these software packages are more literate in general and
therefore more likely to use their computers in ways less likely to be
infected.

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dryicerx
It seems that the bloated AV products from not just Symantec, but also Norton
and McAfee, have a lot in common with the symptoms of malware and viruses

    
    
        - Sucks up CPU
        - Sucks up Memory
        - Sucks up Disk Space
        - A Small Performance hit
        - Uses network bandwidth
        - Annoys you to hell with reminders to buy their product
        - Close to impossible to get rid of at times

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whughes
Norton is part of Symantec. It's just a branding thing for corporate/consumer
use.

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MoeDrippins
In other news, Microsoft says Linux is a bad choice.

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bcl
IIRC ClamAV used to have the quickest response time for adding new viruses to
their database. Smells like marketing FUD to me, must mean the free ones are
cutting into their market.

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Dauntless
I find it funny, especially when Symantec is usually in the bottom half of
every antivirus banchmark made, surpassed easily by antivirus like Avira or
Avast.

