McAfee & Firefox

agaveworm

Hey

Having always used IE; I recently took the plunge and thought I would give Firefox 2.0 ago. I'm very impressed with it's apparent speed over IE7 so far.

Anyway, I had had a long 'live chat' with a McAfee techie about whether I can get McAfee to protect Firefox whilst browsing. The official answer is "as long as I leave IE7 as the default browser; McAfee will protect any browser". It took a long time to get to this statement from him and I'm not entirely convinced.

Please could someone confirm this?

I appreciate your help.

Elf_2

Is it McAfee Anti-Virus or Firewall you want to know about?

As far as I know McAfee should protect your PC no matter which browser you are using.

agaveworm

Elf wrote:

Is it McAfee Anti-Virus or Firewall you want to know about?

As far as I know McAfee should protect your PC no matter which browser you are using.

Hi Elf

I appreciate your help.

Both, I guess. I have the Security Center (centre, I tells ya) jobbee. I thought that McAfee protects the PC; but why does IE7 have to remain as default? Is this a partnership thing?

Can I use Firefox and not worry about net security?

Cheers

albertross_2

Don't work for mcafee, so could be wrong, but I suspect they are talking rubbish..

You can test you av scanning here..

http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm

These files are safe, they are a standard virus test pattern used to test whether your av is working..

I have just tested it in firefox with mcafee, and the AV kicked in as soon as you click on the eicar file, it never gets anywhere near your hard disk.

agaveworm

Alb.

Firstly, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about but you clearly know your stuff.

The eicar file - McAfee kicked in
The others, I think, firefox kicked in

Is that what you were expecting?

Thanks for this....

albertross_2

if mcafee picked up the eicar.com and detected it as a virus, while using firefox, then that means the av scanner is working with firefox (as it should). The scanners work by detecting a pattern in memory, or in the disk cache, so should work regardless of browser as soon as you hit the file with the pattern in, and the default browser issue is a complete red herring.

The test file is just another pattern that all av scanner should detect as a test virus (it's not really a virus at all, completely safe).

Not sure which version of mcafee you have, but if it doesn't have built-in spyware protection, try windows defender or ewido, both free..

agaveworm

Alb.

I really appreciate that. Many thanks for your help, pal.

I think that McAfee are saying that IE has to be left as the default because Microsoft 'recommend' they say that?!?

Have a cracking weekend.

Elf_2

agaveworm wrote:

Alb.

I really appreciate that. Many thanks for your help, pal.

I think that McAfee are saying that IE has to be left as the default because Microsoft 'recommend' they say that?!?

Yep most likely.