LITTLE ROCK — A friend left us a panicky phone message a few days ago. Her computer screen was flashing a message from McAfee anti-virus and it said she had to take action right away. She’s physically disabled and was very scared.
It sounded serious to her. A screen prompt told her to install McAfee’s online backup program, which she neither needs nor wants, and then asked her to pay for it. When she didn’t do that, an icon flashed ominously in Windows task bar, telling her she must take action. This is a gun to the head to someone unfamiliar with the computer.
Joy went over to her apartment, looked at the message, and right-clicked “exit” on the flashing icon. She then looked for the online backup program in the “add/remove programs” section of the Windows Control Panel, but couldn’t find it. So she clicked “start” and then “run” from the main desktop screen and typed “msconfig” to view the “startup” tabs. It didn’t appear there either.
She told her handicapped friend that if the flashing icon comes back when she reboots,just click exit again. It is possible to find the programming code that triggers these stupid warnings, but not worth the effort when you can just click exit.
This is nothing less than fear marketing, and McAfee is not the only purveyor of free floating anxiety. We used to get if frequently from Symantec’s Norton anti-virus programs, which not only insisted on frequent updates but frequent payments as well. Bob says he will never deal with them again. The word is out that their newest version is light and fast and much better than the old clunky version. But we no longer care; they poisoned the well.
On a lesser scale, Rebit’s backup software would tell us every day how many hours it had been since we last backed up our files. It was like we were naughty, naughty. We asked them how to remove these notices and they told us they had no idea how to stop them. So we removed Rebit from the startup menu and that stopped them.
One of our biggest criteria for anti-virus programs and backup software is no-hassle protection. Keep it clean, keep it easy. We don’t want to be nagged to do updates; we don’t even want to be aware of them. We don’t want any esoteric programmers’ messages that say something like “error 43X67-2” has been encountered and this program will be shut down.”
Our Avast anti-virus program just presents small box on the screen telling us it has already done an update without asking. In fact it never asks us to do anything.Without any fear marketing from them, we paid to get the pro version for extra protection. Before that we used their free version for a year or more and were quite satisfied. Malwarebytes.org has an excellent anti-spyware program, which is also free and we sometimes activate for a double check.
Don’t tolerate bullying market pitches - in any field. There are plenty of competitors to turn to in every area of software. We’re looking at a new security program now, and we’ll get to it below.
A BULLDOG OF A SECURITY PROGRAM
We had just about stopped looking at new security programs. There were so many it was like strapping lead weights around our computer to see if we could sink it to the bottom. However, we continue to be very pleased with Avast and Anti-Malware, both of which come in free versions, and we’re impressed with the new BullGuard Internet Security 10. It’s something different.
BullGuard comes with everything but the kitchen sink, and doesn’t slow down our computers. When you first install it, it asks if you want it to run quietly (as in: don’t bug me, just protect me) or whether you want to see what it’s doing at each step. We tried quiet mode on one computer and active mode on another. Both worked fine.
What impressed us were the extras. You get 5 gigabytes of free online storage for e-mail and files. You get anti-spyware, anti-virus protection, a firewall, safe browsing, social-media protection, password protection, a gaming mode and an inspector that identifies outdated software.
The inspector found a dozen programs on our test computer that needed updating. These were all free programs, such as Adobe Flash player and Web Ex. Not updating these programs makes you more vulnerable to hackers.
The program’s anti-virus approach is behavioral: If it looks like a virus and acts like a virus, kill it - even if it doesn’t match anything in the database of known viruses. This approach catches 65 percent more malware than traditional anti-virus programs.
In several independent studies, BullGuard scored detection rates of 100 percent against known and unknown viruses. That’s great, but it wasn’t 100 percent when it came to spyware. (Spyware is a class of programs that don’t attempt to change anything on your computer but just sit there and watch what you’re doing, then report it back to the enemy camp.)
We left our regular Anti-Malware and anti-spyware program from malwarebytes. org installed, and it continued to catch stuff that BullGuard missed. You can install as many anti-spyware programs as you wish, by the way, but only one anti-virus program, because they can interfere with each other.
BullGuard can also act as an uninstaller, and automatically remove conflicting programs. The program is $60 for a one-year subscription on three computers. There’s a 30-day free trial, and that comes with 100 megabytes of online storage at bullguard.com.
BullGuard offers the backup program on its own for $25. It gives you 10 gigabytes of online storage, encryption for your files and e-mails and the easiest file recovery system we’ve ever seen.
NOTE: Readers can search several years’ worth of On Computers columns at oncomp.com. There are new postings every day. Bob and Joy can be contacted by e-mail at bobschwab@gmail.
com and Hyperlink mail to joydee@oncomp.com.
Business, Pages 22 on 11/29/2010