Thursday, October 08, 2009

Round 3 - Free Anti-virus face-off. Free AVG vs Avast Free vs Microsoft Security Essentials.

Ready to face another day, AVG, Avast, CA, MSE and OzEfilter have had a good rest. The combatants today face the following enemies.

Subject / Attachment

Returned mail: Data format error / onlineconnections.com.au.zip
Re: List / my_list01.zip
Jessica would like to be your friend on hi5! / Invitation Card.zip
Your friend invited you to twitter! / Invitation Card.zip
Mail delivery failed : returning message to sender / Message Part>mryw.zip
Shipping update for your Amazon.com order 254-78546325-658742 / Shipping documents.zip
You have received A Hallmark E-Card! / Postcard.zip
Delivery Status Notification (Delay) / Message Part>screensaver.zip
Returned mail: see transcript for details / letter.zip

All the combatants except Avast had a good day.

CA missed 0

AVG missed 0

MSE missed 0

Avast missed 2

OzEfilter missed 0.

I did notice with CA that somewhere between around 8:07pm and 10:24pm last night the anti-virus software updated and malware it didn't previously find in round 2, it now found and removed.

CA removes the malware in the email and provides a text attachment letting the user know the malware was been removed.

AVG puts malware into a separate folder which is a pretty neat way of handling malware.

Avast removes some malware and provides a notice in the email, but for others as the email comes in it asks if you want to block them. Then later when you click on the email it asks if you want to delete the email. I thought this was an extra and unnecessary step. The sound file is certainly a good warning to users, of course, if you receive too many emails with malware the warnings could become annoying.

MSE whilst is has shown to be the best at finding malware with a perfect score so far, the problem is you receive the emails with the malware attached but don't know. You can send the malware on to others and wouldn't know. You can save the files to your hard disk and you wouldn't know they contained malware. It is only when you save the attachment to your computer and then extract the malware file from the zip file that MSE takes action. I can't complain about the action because it is certainly working. If you can work this way then MSE is a good product.

OzEfilter works for me. I wrote the program. It allows me to check my mail at the mail server and delete unwanted emails at the mail server before they ever reach my computer. I receive 50-100 emails a day and half of those are spam and malware. OzEfilter helps me to delete spam and malware so I never receive the emails. OzEfilter isn't an anti-virus program and you should still install an anti-virus/anti-spyware program in case you receive a malware infected email. Using MSE and OzEfilter together would provide an excellent solution to my needs and probably the needs of many people who use pop based email accounts. OzEfilter doesn't help if you are using web mail.

For those just using web mail, MSE could be a good solution as it will detect and remove any malware you download and so far it has been 100% in its detection.

AVG, Avast and CA have all missed malware. AVG and Avast are free for personal use. MSE is free for personal and business use. CA is a commercial product. In this round CA pulled ahead of Avast, but so far there hasn't been much difference between AVG, Avast and CA.

This round has also shown it can take a up to 48 hour for the anti-virus software developers to update their software for the latest threats.

Outcome for round 3.

1. CA, AVG, MSE, OzEfilter
2. Avast

Overall today has been a very good outcome for the combatants. Four with perfect scores and with Avast only missing two. Except for MSE not being integrated with the email client, MSE would be a clear leader at this point in time. That is pretty impressive. Only the future will tell if MSE stays in the number one position.

OzEfilter has performed to expectation. It isn't an anti-virus program, but more a helper to help stop unwanted emails before they reach your inbox. So far it would have stopped all of the unwanted emails from reaching your computer.

CA, Avast and AVG have all let malware into the computer and whilst they perform pretty well, letting email with malware into a computer will result in infections. It is only a matter of when, not if.

- Kelvin Eldridge

No comments:

Post a Comment