Is This Antivirus any good?

tesuhoha

Hi

My husband has just bought me a new laptop for my birthday. Its a Lenovo B570. In the deal we got he paid an extra £1 for Webroot Personal Security which will cover 4 computers. He insisted on getting this.

I have this Dell laptop set up with Avast Free after advice from this board but he wants to take it off and put on this new security programme as well as putting it on the new computer. Can you tell me if its any good? It looks quite good I must admit.

I probably won't reply for a while as I'm just going to set up my new computer but will have a look in a while to see what your replies are.

Many thanks.

martinthebandit

from herehttp://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/software/108771/webroot-internet-security-essentials-review/

Webroot Internet Security Essentials consists of a Sophos virus scanner, a Privacyware firewall and online backup based on Webroot’s servers. But it lacks parental controls, antispam and browser-based antiphishing, and struggled with its core task: malware identification.

Webroot Internet Security Essentials identified only 89.6 percent of AV-Test’s malware zoo. It also disappointed in heuristic tests, detecting just 39.8 percent. The suite did a good job of identifying and removing rootkits, but was mediocre at adware identification, with a score of 90.4 percent.

so it is (probably) better than avast but I would also use spybot

crazyguy

I use webroot and find it works very well !

tesuhoha

Thank you. That has reassured me. I will be installing Wetroot and Spybot or similar.

RussJK

It's doing okay in the latest (preliminary) dynamic tests at AV-C:
http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart2.php

You can't take a lot from these tests necessarily, as they aren't weighted towards the likelihood of infection from each item of malware. Avira and Eset NOD32 do the best in heuristics tests.

closed

if it aint broke, don't fix it.

Load a new or old pc with too much bloated security software and it won't feel new for long

tesuhoha

So am I overloading it by putting Webrooot and Spywareblaster on it?

closed

spywareblaster shouldn't have a noticeable effect on performance but doesn't do a great deal and will need to be constantly updated.

webroot and most paid for products (especially if they have a firewall) are more bloated than avast, and with inferior detection as shown in the tests above.

RussJK

Spywareblaster is a hard one to test its effectiveness, as you'll never know except under test conditions that it's blocked something. It won't do any popups or warnings - it just silently prevents the download of malware programs on those sites that would otherwise give you the 'would you like to run or save this file' dialog when you haven't asked to download anything. I think it's a great program for someone who'll remember to update it weekly, especially for people who still use Internet Explorer.

Saying that, I've stopped using it myself as a trial, since I already have multiple layers of security as it is. Now the only one I need to manually keep updated is my hosts file.

somersethillbilly

RussJK wrote: »

Spywareblaster is a hard one to test its effectiveness, as you'll never know except under test conditions that it's blocked something. It won't do any popups or warnings - it just silently prevents the download of malware programs on those sites that would otherwise give you the 'would you like to run or save this file' dialog when you haven't asked to download anything. I think it's a great program for someone who'll remember to update it weekly, especially for people who still use Internet Explorer.

Saying that, I've stopped using it myself as a trial, since I already have multiple layers of security as it is. Now the only one I need to manually keep updated is my hosts file.

I have often wondered the same as you, but have decided to keep it as it uses no memory and offers "belt & braces" cover. Main browser is Firefox with Adblock Plus (easylist & malwaredomains) and No script. Spywareblaster tends to update fortnightly.

tesuhoha

Well I ended up uninstalling Webroot as it seemed to be stopping me from doing many things such as downloading programmes. I now have Firefox with Adblock plus, Spywareblaster and Avast Free. Windows Firewall. Just one small thing I am now sure how to subscribe to Malware Domains when I added Adblock Plus. I seemed to have missed the chance. Is there any way of adding this?

I am also going to install Malwarebytes I think.