anti-virus Antivirus companies that have made major mistakes....

[remixedcat]

Please list those as honest as you can. Please provide more then 5 reported news links per vendor to confirm. Please also indicate the problem in full.

Please make sure to also post your honest experience about the problem with the anti-virus software that you have if you have experienced this major problem..

Remember.... This must have been a widespread problem documented in the media.

I will be preparing this list for a client so keep it professional, no flaming, no wars in this thread please. Thank you and much appreciated.

[jasondefaoite]

Wait ... so we do your work for you? How much are you paying us? :)

[Vvo]

muffins?

[The Evil Overlord]

Sorry, no list, just Zonealarm, in my case it was better on win 7 x64 than norton, (not REALLY a problem, more of a gripe---> )Action Center kept telling me norton's off, or it's antivirus isn't running, kept having to uninstall/reinstall for the year I had it (at least 6 times a week in my case, most frustrating thing I ever bought) sometimes I would have to reinstall when starting pc.

Zonealarm ISS, 2nd or 3rd year now, I don't remember, NEVER had any infections. One time I thought I had, and I think Rappy told me to get a rootkit remover (sorry to the mod who it was if it wasn't Rappy) and all those removers he recommended found nothing (plus for ZA seeing as I used to have it on XP back in the day)

[dead.cell]

No offense, but perhaps utilizing Amazon's turk system would be a better route to go. There's a difference between asking someone for help and asking someone to perform a task or set of tasks...

[xpablo]

Talk about lazy!

Do your own research, what kind of professional goes to an internet forum and ask it's members to provide input on a project/report for their client?

[remixedcat]

Well they wanted it this way don't ask me. It's not my idea. Research purposes as well. I told you all to please not be rude or flame....

[The Evil Overlord]

Talk about lazy!

Do your own research, what kind of professional goes to an internet forum and ask it's members to provide input on a project/report for their client?

me me me!

then I go to dumber people than me and they're like 'you're a god among men'

[kiddingguy]

I'll start with the first one:

https://www.neowin.net/news/kaspersky-antivirus-update-cut-off-windows-xp-internet-access-fix-now-in-place

O hey wait, it's on the front page news

[The Evil Overlord]

I'll start with the first one:

http://www.neowin.ne...ix-now-in-place

O hey wait, it's on the front page news

DAMMIT beaten by like 2 minutes

[sc302 Veteran]

Couple of places to start

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

http://www.av-test.org/en/home/

http://www.virusbtn.com/index

[Phantom Spaceman]

Well they wanted it this way don't ask me. It's not my idea. Research purposes as well. I told you all to please not be rude or flame....

Wait, who "wanted it this way"?

[Hardcore Til I Die]

http://news.cnet.com..._3-5063226.html

MS Blaster worm. I had Norton installed at the time and it was useless. Is it really as simple as that to beat an antivirus: cause a computer to shut down before the antivirus can update its' definitions?

I didn't know back then what I know now, I had no idea how to stop a computer from shutting down using the command prompt, and I didn't have a smartphone or other computer back then, so I had to try and do as much research as I could (on 1MB broadband I think) in the 60 seconds I had before my PC shut down each time. Was a nightmare! Once I found the shutdown -a command it was easy to fix.

I don't know if other antiviruses were of any more assistance though... maybe not.

[Alwaysonacoffebreak]

Strange.

This is not the first time You ask "help" from Neowin members without You actually doing any research yourself. :/

Second link in Google for me.

http://antivirus.about.com/od/whatisavirus/tp/antivirusmistakes.htm

Gee..not lazy at all. :huh:

[Nick H. Supervisor]

While I agree with the overall sentiments - it's one thing asking for some help with an issue and another asking for others to do the whole task for you - let's remember to keep it civil. If you don't have a response that will help the OP then don't bother posting.

[cork1958]

I'll start with the first one:

http://www.neowin.ne...ix-now-in-place

O hey wait, it's on the front page news

EXACTLY what I was going to post. Bet that link brought this topic up. Should go back and see if this topic was created by that person who said they gave up all their Kaspersky licenses for AVG, but I'm to lazy!!

Remeber, it's not just AV companies that have done this either. Remember when Malwarebytes had the same major issue with an update?

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

As someone who actually works for a company which makes anti-malware software (the term "anti-virus" is not really de rigueur these days) I will admit to some curiosity. Do you have any idea why your client wanted you to "crowdsource" this to a forum, and what they planning on doing with the data? Aside from creating a report about user awareness of such issues, I really cannot see what the value would be for a report that sourced information in this fashion.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[remixedcat]

I wasn't given much details, sorry.

They just went:

Hi Liz K./RemixedCat,

I noticed you are active on several forums and I would like your assistance with locating a partner that can help us with our security needs.

We are aware that you are a partner with Sophos (due to your contact/forum posts), however we discovered that they had a huge issue last year and we would like to avoid doing business with companies that have compromised thier customers computers.

We also have observed that you have a relationship with webroot. Is this correct? If so please specify what that relationship is.

We would also like it if you can ask around on a few of your forums and we can quickly find a new partner that way, or you may ask your co-workers. Please note that we are currently using Symantec's products, however they are not currently meeting our needs.

We would be thrilled to find a new partner that would meet our long term needs. Please note that we are not an IT focused company so we need even more help than most.

Thank you very much,

[name/company withheld]

Thing is I don't have a 'relationship" with webroot, nor do I have anything of theirs installed on my system or ever have. So I have no clue how good they really are. :(

I told them that as well. They haven't responded yet and I sent the reply to this email last night.

[Noir Angel]

There seems to be a still unfixed bug in Avast on Windows XP that seems to make memory and CPU usage skyrocket when accessing network shares, I've reported it and been ignored so far. Will try and snag some evidence next time I'm at an XP unit.

[theyarecomingforyou]

It's one thing to ask for personal assistance; it's another to ask people to do your work for you. You should just search on Google or a security forum like everybody else here would do anyway. It's not like people have random anti-virus security breaches bookmarked just in case someone asks about them.

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

Their message suggests they're a bit ignorant of their own field/audience.. I would probably just put this to bed. :p

[remixedcat]

So nobody is allowed to ask for tech help here?

Some people actually do keep track of this stuff.... you know.... the fanboys.... so they have ammo against thier rvials supporters.....

kinda like how apple fanboys have TONS of links at the ready to attack windows fanboys....

I figured people would have those here. and this would be a good place to ask.

[Davo]

...but you didn't ask. I clicked on this thread thinking it was going to be an article. After I read the OP, I thought I somehow wandered into the freelance/request-a-task forum by accident.

You have to realize that absolutely nothing about this makes sense, even moreso when you included that weird-ass letter.

[remixedcat]

Well I just wanted to ask what anti-malware company hasn't screwed up something major like deleting system files or anything.... that's all I asked was a simple question.....

I think everyone's reading into this too deeply and overreacting.

and just about every major one has and I even tried to look for myself for 5 hours and I couldn't find a decent one that hasn't..... so this was my "second opinion" sort of place as well.

[Noir Angel]

I can understand why someone would need to gather extra data for a project like this, having reports from people using different configurations provides extra evidence, and it's the kind of research that most people don't have the resources to do on their own. If you want to help him do, if you don't then do not but is there really any need to drag the thread off topic because you don't like the way the member is trying to collect his data? It's sad to see so many people with an aversion to helping others without personal gain.