"Security" software breaks Windows

It gets fun again - my life I mean; the rest of this blog post is dead serious, please make no mistake.

For years I have recommended NOT TO USE products from Webroot. I remember too many bad experiences with and infections on computers that were presumably "protected by Webroot".

In NBC's words:

An antivirus service used by tens of thousands of businesses and millions of home users shut down an untold number of computers around the world Monday after it mistakenly identified core parts of Microsoft Windows as threats, the company confirmed.

Similar events have occurred in the past; sadly they are much more common than we would like and the public hardly knows about it. Some well known companies in the "computer security" or "anti virus" business have had similar snafus. Here is a quote from a blog post at Bleepingcomputer.com:

... Such mishaps have been reported for years to include major anti-virus/security vendors such as Panda, avast, AVG, BitDefender, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, McAfee and Symantec. In most cases when these issues occur, the anti-virus vendors and security tool developers take quick action to correct the problem and provide support to those users who have been affected.

To call such blunders a "mishap" is not a euphemism, IMHO it is outright glossing over or covering up a major blunder.

Things like this should not happen and they don't need to happen, they are major avoidable blunders. In every case we can only speculate about the "why" and I don't like to speculate.

What does all the above tell us? IMHO very simple:

Do not trust a single word in high gloss, pretty brochures.
Do not believe the words in computer related advertisements on TV.

What you find in high gloss publications is mostly marketing hype and likely not really trustworthy. And when certain "security" software seemingly out-of-the-blue suddenly is being hyped over the moon in TV advertisements it IMHO is time to run for the hills. It tells me that very likely a marketing campaign has to cover up some so called "mishap".

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So far I have used the acronym IMHO three times in this blog post. Generally there are always at least two ways to look at something, as we say around computers YMMV. If you have a different opinion - or maybe simply think I am a dumba.s then I ask you to please leave a comment, state your case or blow off steam below. 

Thank you in advance.

Slow Computer? Boot Your bleeping Security Suite!

In the last three days I had three customers who were complaining about their slow computers. Customer number one had an older but fairly well equipped Windows XP machine with paid AVG, number two a Vista computer with Kaspersky Security Suite (paid) and number three was running Windows Vista Basic on a computer with limited main memory and Trend Micro Security Suite (paid).

In all three cases the machines were between four and six years old, that is just on the border where I begin to evaluate the worth of investing money into an aging computer versus buying a new computer.

In all three cases the customers choose to have me try removing the installed "security suites" and replace them with Microsoft Security Essentials before they made their choice between fix old or buy new.

Number one was a no brainer; original words of the customer: "Wow; that box NEVER before worked that fast!". He still is using Windows XP and he is a happy camper.

Number two was trickier because his machine had over time caught about 340 pieces of malicious software, among others two very nasty Rootkit viruses, a couple of Trojan horse programs and it was missing half a ton of updates. The clean up and updating took some time, I removed Kaspersky and installed Microsoft Security Essentials and guess what, the customer said he'd happily pay me, give the computer to his daughter in college and asked me to advise him what to replace his computer with!

Number three is so happy they gave me an excellent tip in the form of home made dill pickles, yummy! Thank you Fred and Judy! They will keep using their computer until they can afford a new one. And I got an additional job from them, thanks for that too.

Why do I tell these stories? Because that's the reality out in the field of home computing, not what I witnessed last (Black) Friday in a local Best Buy store where almost every customer who talked to the Best Buy sales people about a computer got pestered to buy one of  Kaspersky's security suites.

All these by now massively complex programs in my opinion are not worth the money compared to Microsoft Security Essentials.

MSE "speaks" only understandable English,
MSE is absolutely unobtrusive,
MSE does not slow down your computer,
MSE does not block your computer while it is scanning,
MSE updates in the background when the computer is otherwise idle and on top of all
MSE is free, free as in no money!

Sounds like a no brainer to me.


As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.

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