Consumer Reports on Internet Security

Any of you see this yet? It rated Anti-Virus and Security Suites.
It mentions 1G of RAM to run the Suites effectively. Tend Micro got #1 AVG Anit Virus came in last...... Which I use.
Any Comments?
Kelly

 

Yes, we subscribe to CR and I have to tell you... I take their findings with a grain of salt. I believe they rated Trend Micro as the top security suite with BitDefender coming in 6th. But one only has to Google this to come up with dozens of other tests and ratings from independent sources to come up with completely different results. Frankly, can you trust any of them anymore... particularly when they all seem to arrive at different conclusions?

 

Pete,

Consumer Reports is a paper magazine based in the USA. If one wishes to view the complete articles online (including ratings), then one must be a paid subscriber to ConsumerReports.org.


Kelly,

I agree with James' opinions. Although I haven't yet seen the articles you referred to, Consumer Reports (CR) published a similar set of articles in their September 2006 issue. Those articles were unclear to me how they prioritized the "importance" of various program features.

People might disagree with CR's views about what program characteristics are more important than others. The malware detection test results may also be dependent on the sample of malware CR used. Therefore, those reported results might be taken with a grain of salt.


Seems to me Grisoft/AVG has a very good reputation in the online anti-malware community.


No single anti-malware application is capable of detecting all malware. Therefore, one should also make use of several reputable anti-malware applications on a regular basis as on-demand scanners.

Also, if one anti-malware application produces an alert, then it might be a "false positive" (where a legitimate file is flagged as malicious, for example). One should then use other similar anti-malware applications as on-demand scanners to help determine if such is the case. Jotti's online scan is also useful for this purpose.

Keep in mind, running two anti-virus application "guards" concurrently resident in memory is commonly not recommended because they may "fight" each other for control of detected viruses and negatively affect performance. Likewise for anti-spyware applications.

As the line between "anti-spyware" and "anti-virus" seems to be getting less distinct (often lumped together as "anti-malware ", for example), I suspect somewhere along the line (if not already) it might be bad practice to run memory-resident "anti-spyware" alongside memory-resident "anti-virus ". I think that's something to keep in mind in case issues arise down the road.

 

Thanks mailman, as a side note I run a mail presort machine......
I like AVG and it does not bog my PC down. No issues yet. I understand the difference between virus and mal-ware.
As far as CR is concerned I take it with a grain of salt.
A few months ago the compared car waxes. They had no clue how to detail a car.
I run Spy-Bot and Ad-Aware 2007. Plus Web Roots Window washer.
I may need a live package as well.
Thanks

Kelly