Study says no need to pay for antivirus

[v.laurie]

Report: no need to pay for antivirus

[garth]

From the report

"Which? set up five computers with a variety of protection, between wholly unprotected and fully secured with the latest, paid for antivirus and firewall.

Over a month, the PCs were used to visit a variety of webpages, from reputable ones such as Amazon to malware-riddled bit-torrent sites. None of the machines became infected."

I wish they had published the all the details of this, such as which firewall, which AV, which suite....what were these malware ridden sites. I have no reason to doubt the study, but then i run a free AV. Is telling people all they need is a basic AV and firewall even responsible journalism considering the gulf in quality between the best products and the worst, free or paid for? It's all a bit vague.

Also....

"“We actually did a test... and the paid for security software comes out better than the free stuff,"

What was this mysterious test? What were the parameters? Did the payware come out best prevention and detection wise or for other reasons, such as features, ease of use, system resource consumption....and on.

[Concerned User]

And then companies like Norton, Panda and others who depend extensively on Payware type suites will come up with another "study" and claim that free stuff sucks and their "pay through the nose" suites will protect the PC against all exploits ...

and yes, they should have mentioned what AV suites they used in their tests.

a comment in the pc pro pages http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security...-for-antivirus

If you have a...

teenage son or daughter, then I think AV is truly essential. The majority of computers I repair are 'damaged' due to teenager misuse. Although having said that, the past couple of weeks the majority have been corrupted by an AVG update, so much for using free antivirus software to keep your computer running...

Guess the guy/girl must not have heard of non-admin user accounts and basic computer security? with so much of choice within free products, there seems to be no reason to pay for "bloatware" type suites right now and I don't think that teenagers are so irresponsible .....

My niece who uses a mac at her home is at ease using Windows XP when she comes to visit me (of course, she uses the guest account and I password protect my account).

[MidnightCowboy]

I think this is one of the key comments:

"While the consumer group admitted it only takes one successful attack to take out a computer or a user's data, it said keeping software updated, using basic free antivirus, and common sense was "adequate protection".

Symantec as usual dished out the usual ambiguity with their response but I think AVG were more close to the mark.

Less savvy PC users do often choose a paid option because of the support available when something goes wrong. Trolling through free forums looking for a solution isn't on every one's must-do agenda That said, a brief excursion into the paid forums doesn't always demonstrate a very high level of customer satisfaction, so paying for support is no guarantee of actually receiving it.

Originally Posted by MidnightCowboy

I think this is one of the key comments:
Less savvy PC users do often choose a paid option because of the support available when something goes wrong. Trolling through free forums looking for a solution isn't on every one's must-do agenda That said, a brief excursion into the paid forums doesn't always demonstrate a very high level of customer satisfaction, so paying for support is no guarantee of actually receiving it.

No doubt. The best help I've gotten over the years is through the community, and not through paid support. In fact, more cases than not, paid support has usually let me down. I end up exchanging emails with someone sending me canned responses, and they don't know anything more about the product than I do. Some of the vendors do offer excellent support however.

I think that most freeware is not actually freeware. Someone is getting paid, usually. Whether it be through advertising, or profits made from charging businesses for their commercial product, or whatever. It ultimately always filters down to the consumer. When a business pays for it, then the consumer pays for it as well. We are paying for it, but it often times is done indirectly. There are exceptions to the rule, but they are exceptions.

Symantec has their product pre-installed on so many machines sold off of the shelf. I believe that this is their cash cow, with their Norton product line anyway.

Some people don't even realize that free security exists. Well...that's their fault I suppose. I think that this fact is taken advantage of by security vendors.

And that is my macroeconomics lesson for the day.

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by JohnnyDollar

Some people don't even realize that free security exists. Well...that's their fault I suppose.

I wouldn't go as far as to say "fault" but it's fair comment to say that this is symptomatic of a much wider human aversion to research unless it's centered around soap operas or social media

Back in the UK one of my best fishing buddies was a service engineer for Hotpoint. He lost count of the number of folks who messed up a brand new washing machine simply because they failed to read the advisory notices and remove the transport stabilizers before switching it on. This, he said, in itself wasn't fatal if folks then just left it alone and waited to be attended but as is often the case when something goes wrong they have to push, pull, switch, turn and poke at everything they don't understand before picking up the phone to make a service call.

I used to see exactly the same thing with computers. This won't open or that's stuck so let's double click this ten times (still scratching head), wow!, now it's worse so let's re-boot but hang about now that's not responding either so bang off with the power and start again.

Result 1? Now my computer is slow and bits aren't working right.
Result 2? Hmmm, love this ad about how to cure a slow computer.
Result 3? Having run the Wizzo reg cleaning max speed-up optimizer, now the *** thing won't do nothing!
Result 4? Hello Mr. PC repair man - would you like some more easy money reinstalling my Windows?

[26Dolphins]

Hi,

Originally Posted by garth

... I wish they had published the all the details of this, ...

I agree, without the details, the conclusions mentioned don't say much, imho. But then, this sort of articles and reports may not be targeting the more PC savvy people.

Originally Posted by MidnightCowboy

... Less savvy PC users do often choose a paid option because of the support available when something goes wrong. ...

Less savvy users, who don't have more savvy people as friends/ relatives, usually end up buying a preconfigured PC (laptops excluded?) which comes with a preinstalled, paid security program (suite). They also usually end up renewing the license of that preinstalled suite, because they don't advance as users (for all the reasons mentioned already and the ones given below).

Originally Posted by JohnnyDollar

... Some people don't even realize that free security exists. Well...that's their fault I suppose. I think that this fact is taken advantage of by security vendors. ...

I don't fully agree. If you fall into the above category (most do when first getting a computer) it's only expected that you haven't heard of free security. The next expected thing is to rely on some professional tech support (guy/ shop). If your tech support is also in the business of selling software, you won't hear about free security from them either. So, the fact that new users don't know free security exists is taken advantage of by almost everyone in the computer business. You get out of this vicious cicle only if/ when someone introduces you to the world of freeware or if/ when you get sick of feeling helpless with your rig, thus having to blindly rely on your tech support.

On a side note:

... to malware-riddled bit-torrent sites ...

Why do torrent sites always get mentioned as synonyms for malware? There're plenty of good torrent sites, as mentioned even here on TSA.

[Concerned User]

Originally Posted by 26Dolphins

On a side note:

Why do torrent sites always get mentioned as synonyms for malware? There're plenty of good torrent sites, as mentioned even here on TSA.

Like Warez sites, you can find keygens, cracks et al. in torrent sites and also normal stuff too. For average users, it is very difficult to distinguish between a legit crack/patch/keygen and one with trojan horses/other malware/etc.

The software companies are obviously not pleased to find full versions of their products in torrent sites. Therefore they will do their best to project these sites as "dangerous sites". Yes, there are good torrent sites out there.

Originally Posted by 26Dolphins

I don't fully agree. If you fall into the above category (most do when first getting a computer) it's only expected that you haven't heard of free security. The next expected thing is to rely on some professional tech support (guy/ shop). If your tech support is also in the business of selling software, you won't hear about free security from them either. So, the fact that new users don't know free security exists is taken advantage of by almost everyone in the computer business. You get out of this vicious cicle only if/ when someone introduces you to the world of freeware or if/ when you get sick of feeling helpless with your rig, thus having to blindly rely on your tech support.

Sure. It's just a fact of how it is. I suppose I shouldn't have used the word "fault", but instead used with the word "lesson". People get taken advantage of.

[Taurus]

What I used to hear from a customer.........

"Take it off! If it's free, it can't be any good!"

I don't hear that much anymore.