Av-Comparatives Retrospective/Proactive Test

[Zeus_Hunt]

There is a big surprise awaiting this months Proactive Test...

AV-Comparatives Main Test

Check On-demand Comparative Test as well...

Avira placed 2nd with 99.7% OnDemand Detection Rate and is 1st with 69% ProActive Detection Rate.

It is doing quite well...

[Lite]

Its not all about % of detection :) . Its not suprising to see Avira having a high detection % in the tests - they had a major push in the last few months.

Having a low amount of false positives is especially important, particularly when "novice" users are involved.

Further, these tests don't take into account various "on-access" features like HIPS systems which some of these AV tools have. Avira's "HIPS" is currently in BETA testing for those interested :rolleyes:

[Escobarretje]

Yeah I was using ESET, then switched to AVIRA (eset gave me problems). Avira is great, BUT has way too many false positives. A lot of cracks here on nsane are seen as a virus, and I just hate that.

Now I'm using Symantec Norton (latest win7 beta) and it works GREAT. Faster then Eset and avira, good detection (check last checks). It's simply amazing. It's a pity that it's not tested in the latest av comparatives yet... think it has the 3rd place or something.

[ssj100]

Yeah I was using ESET, then switched to AVIRA (eset gave me problems). Avira is great, BUT has way too many false positives. A lot of cracks here on nsane are seen as a virus, and I just hate that.

Now I'm using Symantec Norton (latest win7 beta) and it works GREAT. Faster then Eset and avira, good detection (check last checks). It's simply amazing. It's a pity that it's not tested in the latest av comparatives yet... think it has the 3rd place or something.

Faster than Avira? Have you tried scanning your whole system with Avira (with the multi-core option enabled?) Avira is the fastest by far mate, if you have multi-core processor.

Avira too many false positives? I'm yet to see one. Some people who have used Avira for years have never had false positives. As I said, black-listing programs are all about rolling the dice haha. They can't detect all, and they can possibly detect falsely. Black-listing products are useless for prevention really. And remember the old saying, prevention is better than cure.

Therefore, use Sandboxie, a software Firewall, a classical HIPS, and then a black-listing program (like Avira...even the free version is better than the others). If you use this setup, you'll find that the black-listing program does nothing, because your computer is pretty much 100% protected from being infected in the first place haha! You need to configure things up properly though. I've finally found my 100%. I hope others will find it too.

[Peace_Angel]

Some people who have used Avira for years have never had false positives.

You mean that these people have only windows and microsoft office installed on their pc and they normally do not surf the internet... Right? LOL

Peace

[Lite]

Its clear that the Avira software package, when heuristics are set to highest (as in the tests) cause a higher percentage of false postives than other scanners (however there are some other packages that cause a large number of false positives even with heurisitics disabled). Lets leave that at that :) . The system is improving however.

[Escobarretje]

Yeah I was using ESET, then switched to AVIRA (eset gave me problems). Avira is great, BUT has way too many false positives. A lot of cracks here on nsane are seen as a virus, and I just hate that.

Now I'm using Symantec Norton (latest win7 beta) and it works GREAT. Faster then Eset and avira, good detection (check last checks). It's simply amazing. It's a pity that it's not tested in the latest av comparatives yet... think it has the 3rd place or something.

Faster than Avira? Have you tried scanning your whole system with Avira (with the multi-core option enabled?) Avira is the fastest by far mate, if you have multi-core processor.

Yes I did, and for me fast not only means that it scans fast, it also means that my PC runs fast (when the AV is just running on the background). Have you tested the all new Norton products mate? You will see, it's faster that Avira and Eset, they really are! (and yes I have a multicore CPU).

Avira too many false positives? I'm yet to see one. Some people who have used Avira for years have never had false positives. As I said, black-listing programs are all about rolling the dice haha. They can't detect all, and they can possibly detect falsely. Black-listing products are useless for prevention really. And remember the old saying, prevention is better than cure.

Avira just has many FP, and I don't like that. A lot of cracks are recognized as a virus by Avira with just the normal settings (medium heuristics). Some are not, but some are and that's just not good for me. I want to use my cracks the way they're meant to be, not disable the AV then download it and having a lot of hassle.

Therefore, use Sandboxie, a software Firewall, a classical HIPS, and then a black-listing program (like Avira...even the free version is better than the others). If you use this setup, you'll find that the black-listing program does nothing, because your computer is pretty much 100% protected from being infected in the first place haha! You need to configure things up properly though. I've finally found my 100%. I hope others will find it too.

I know Avira is good, it was my favorite for like 4 months, until the new Norton products came, I tried those and they are amazing. Super fast, install in under 1 minute and they work perfect. Hope you will test it out to see it for yourself :)

[ssj100]

Yes, I've tested it out before mate. Norton is light for sure, but Avira is still much faster in terms of on-demand full system scanning time. I don't notice Avira being there at all, since I have strong hardware. I also don't notice Norton being there at all, because of the same reason haha! So in terms of performance, it becomes negligible when you have strong hardware and both products are relatively light.

Avira has a completely free version and it's just great. Consistently highest detection rates in all tests, which is what really matters. The same just cannot be said about Norton. Sorry mate. But I'm glad that you like Norton. The beauty with Avira is that I have life-time license and don't need to use any cracks that I need to remember to reset every month etc. It's completely free mate! Combine it with Sandboxie etc, and you'll find you won't even need Avira or Norton etc haha!

Someone said: "You mean that these people have only windows and microsoft office installed on their pc and they normally do not surf the internet... Right? LOL".

Wrong mate haha! Look at the false positive rates. They only differ by about 10-20 (perhaps out of hundreds of thousands) in the tests! That's nothing mate. Also I've never had a false positive with Avira and I use internet facing applications all the time and even test malware with my system etc haha. I find Avira has always had excellent detection and I've never had a false positive with it. I bet there are millions of users out there who can say the same.

EDIT: by the way, did you actually read how Norton did in the test? (http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report22.pdf)

It got 35%, while Avira got 69%. Avira nearly doubled Norton's detection rate! That's a HUGE difference mate.

[Infinite_Vision]

Yes, I've tested it out before mate. Norton is light for sure, but Avira is still much faster in terms of on-demand full system scanning time. I don't notice Avira being there at all, since I have strong hardware. I also don't notice Norton being there at all, because of the same reason haha! So in terms of performance, it becomes negligible when you have strong hardware and both products are relatively light.

Avira has a completely free version and it's just great. Consistently highest detection rates in all tests, which is what really matters. The same just cannot be said about Norton. Sorry mate. But I'm glad that you like Norton. The beauty with Avira is that I have life-time license and don't need to use any cracks that I need to remember to reset every month etc. It's completely free mate! Combine it with Sandboxie etc, and you'll find you won't even need Avira or Norton etc haha!

Someone said: "You mean that these people have only windows and microsoft office installed on their pc and they normally do not surf the internet... Right? LOL".

Wrong mate haha! Look at the false positive rates. They only differ by about 10-20 (perhaps out of hundreds of thousands) in the tests! That's nothing mate. Also I've never had a false positive with Avira and I use internet facing applications all the time and even test malware with my system etc haha. I find Avira has always had excellent detection and I've never had a false positive with it. I bet there are millions of users out there who can say the same.

EDIT: by the way, did you actually read how Norton did in the test? (http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report22.pdf)

It got 35%, while Avira got 69%. Avira nearly doubled Norton's detection rate! That's a HUGE difference mate.

You do know that those tests are done to show regular consumers or regular internet users who have no clues in how these things work? The reasons why you don't have false positives is because you have blacklisted a lot of the program. Now, if you were to not blacklist these applications or cracks, then some of them might/will show up. I'm not an Avira user nor am I a Norton user, I'm just trying to give both point of view. To be less biased. If they say there are false positives then there are false positives. To get those results, they probably simulated the test a thousand time.

One more thing, one product might work for one individual while it might not work for another individual. If someone does not or prefer not to use a product because he/she does not feel that it meets their needs then it is up to them. We don't have to write a book about which product is better than the other. That is what happened last time when we (the forum) had a big argument about which application was the best for Eset NOD32. It ended up with two long time members here resigning from the forum. :)

[ssj100]

Yes, I've tested it out before mate. Norton is light for sure, but Avira is still much faster in terms of on-demand full system scanning time. I don't notice Avira being there at all, since I have strong hardware. I also don't notice Norton being there at all, because of the same reason haha! So in terms of performance, it becomes negligible when you have strong hardware and both products are relatively light.

Avira has a completely free version and it's just great. Consistently highest detection rates in all tests, which is what really matters. The same just cannot be said about Norton. Sorry mate. But I'm glad that you like Norton. The beauty with Avira is that I have life-time license and don't need to use any cracks that I need to remember to reset every month etc. It's completely free mate! Combine it with Sandboxie etc, and you'll find you won't even need Avira or Norton etc haha!

Someone said: "You mean that these people have only windows and microsoft office installed on their pc and they normally do not surf the internet... Right? LOL".

Wrong mate haha! Look at the false positive rates. They only differ by about 10-20 (perhaps out of hundreds of thousands) in the tests! That's nothing mate. Also I've never had a false positive with Avira and I use internet facing applications all the time and even test malware with my system etc haha. I find Avira has always had excellent detection and I've never had a false positive with it. I bet there are millions of users out there who can say the same.

EDIT: by the way, did you actually read how Norton did in the test? (http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report22.pdf)

It got 35%, while Avira got 69%. Avira nearly doubled Norton's detection rate! That's a HUGE difference mate.

You do know that those tests are done to show regular consumers or regular internet users who have no clues in how these things work? The reasons why you don't have false positives is because you have blacklisted a lot of the program. Now, if you were to not blacklist these applications or cracks, then some of them might/will show up. I'm not an Avira user nor am I a Norton user, I'm just trying to give both point of view. To be less biased. If they say there are false positives then there are false positives. To get those results, they probably simulated the test a thousand time.

One more thing, one product might work for one individual while it might not work for another individual. If someone does not or prefer not to use a product because he/she does not feel that it meets their needs then it is up to them. We don't have to write a book about which product is better than the other. That is what happened last time when we (the forum) had a big argument about which application was the best for Eset NOD32. It ended up with two long time members here resigning from the forum. :)

It's okay mate. Black-listing technology (eg. Antivirus software) is my last line of defense anyway. It's arguably not needed, since I basically have a setup that has 100% prevention.

[Escobarretje]

It's ok guys, I just used ESET for a long time, till I saw Avira was doing a damn good job in the latest test. But... I just didn't liked the false positives I had, and it was slightly slowing down my system (my system is good, but not thát good :P) And that's why i'm using norton now! :) With windows 7 it works perfectly and you can just renew the beta everytime, so no cracks etc (till now). Oh and in the test they use an older version of Norton, the new products are a little better again ;)

The last thing: Norton has pulse updates, you get updates every 5 mins which is really good. And another thing: If you scan your HD the first time it just scans everything, but after that norton remembers what is already scanned (and not changed yet) and it will not scan those clean files again. So the next HD scan can be done in a few minutes :cheers:

But: i'm not biased, I just tested those AV's out for myself and think that for me, Norton works the best. I know that ESET and Avira are good too, and if you like those more, just keep on using them :)

@ssj100: I only use an AV, the mvps HOSTS file and Spywareblaster. I'm checking out Sandboxie right now, but can you tell me which hips u are using?

[ssj100]

Good luck mate. You'll need at least 10 hours to fully understand and use the power of Sandboxie, and once you do, you'll realise it's the greatest security application ever created haha.

Yes, AV-comparatives used old programs mate. Avira 8 was used (Avira 9 is out now, and much improved and even lighter than before). NOD32 3.0 was used instead of 4.0.

I'm using Comodo Firewall with Defense+ as my Firewall and classical HIPS. Good luck mate.

[Bizarre™]

I'm using a virtual OS for any application I think is suspicious, and so far I haven't been infected.

[Peace_Angel]

I'm using a virtual OS for any application I think is suspicious, and so far I haven't been infected.

Yeah... I think it's best for stuff you are not sure about... Absolutely no risk of being infected!!!

I have been using VMware for almost 3 years and it has worked great for me.

I heard VirtualPC is great virtualisation soft too; haven't YET used it though.

Peace.

[Lite]

The applications used are the latest ones available when the testing process was started (back in february).