6 ms·

Which other AntiVirus vendors do this? How can you opt-out and is there a point to installing anti-virus software to begin with?

Arubis 7y ago
To answer the last, at this point, you install (or have preinstalled) AV to comply with enterprise IT policies.
- davrosthedalek 7y ago
  Or be protected from bank fraud. Not that the AV will stop it, but having no AV gives the banks a reason to reject the claim. At least with DB in Germany. But they accept Windows Defender!
  - klingonopera 7y ago
    German banks and technology are terrible! They're now using an app for authentication, that you can only get from Google's PlayStore or Apple's App Store. Germany, the country of data protection, and yet their banks force you to use Google/Apple. Oh sure, I can use terminals or pay money for a hardware device whose manufacturer has an exclusive contract with the bank, but this is absurd considering all they'd have to do is provide a channel for getting the APK straight from their own servers instead of through Google. ...or at least give me an SHA256 of the APK, so I can really be sure that when I use a 3rd party app to download it, I'm not getting a Trojan or something.
    - davrosthedalek 7y ago
      True. I guess they have to go through Apple's app store anyway, but they could offer the APK on their website. On the other hand, I can set up a recurring payment, for free, from one account to a different account, at a different bank. In the US, my bank sends a check. Per snail-mail. (Also: photoTAN is great. Could please all banks do that if they need an app anyway?)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - DavideNL 7y ago
    > but having no AV gives the banks a reason to reject the claim a good reason to only do banking on an iPad/iPhone...
zaarn 7y ago
If you use Windows, use Windows Defender. It doesn't MitM your connections and has a comparable detection rates for 0days and common malware to all other modern AVs. Microsoft has put a lot of work into making Defender as secure as possible (you can even run it inside a VM so any exploit of defender is just trapped inside a HyperV VM instead of your system). There is no point in installing any other AV vendor; they all suck, their software sucks, they ask way more than it's worth (nothing) and they frequently break security measures of software all over the ecosystem (some AVs still disable ASLR/KASLR to make injecting their DLL into all processes easier)
- mkl 7y ago
  Also, Microsoft has an incentive to eliminate viruses and malware completely - to make their OS safer. Third party AV companies rely on continuing threats to stay in business. I'm not saying AV companies hold back or help malware out, I'm saying Microsoft has good reason to throw huge resources at the problem as a whole.
  - FloayYerBoat 7y ago
    ...and to build on your comment: Incentive to not slow down the performance of the OS while protecting it.
    - duxup 7y ago
      That was what caught my eye about MS's antivirus offerings from the start. I was really impressed how well it ran without me ever noticing. I got a new laptop from work recently and I didn't spend a great deal of time looking it over as i was busy and ... of course I hit some random performance problems as McAfee was abusing my machine while I was trying to work. Endlessly installing antivirus programs is getting pretty old.
      - safeplanet-fesa 7y ago
        I had to help some regular computer user to clean their computer; one of the user's requests was to "fix" their McAfee, meaning, to update the subscription and solve other "security threats" (not viruses) that McAfee reported. After seeing how indecent this antivirus is, how it uses real intimidation, and is very intrusive with constant pop-ups, we settled on not continuing the subscription and getting rid of it altogether.
joobus 7y ago
I know Avast hijacks https traffic.
- _wolfie_ 7y ago
  Yeah. And it even shows popup stating "Your browsing is insecure, update to avast premium" or something like that. Funny thing is, it happens (the popup) way more often when in internet banking or on porn sites. Kinda creepy.
hs86 7y ago
Some time ago I tried Bitdefender on Windows and it immediately MitMed itself so that it could append green check marks after every search result on Google to signal me that that site is 'safe'. There was no browser extension from Bitdefender involved and it applied to all installed browsers. Maybe browsers and Microsoft should actively fight this?? There is also AdGuard for Windows/Mac/Android which does this in order to block ads without the involvement of a browser extension. While this sounds like a bad alternative to uBlock Origin, it could be a necessary workaround in the future if Google succeeds with their Manifest V3 'conspiracy' against ad blockers. On Android it is also a better alternative to DNS/hosts based ad blockers because it won't leave blank ad placeholders in Chrome.
mercules 7y ago
Most AntiVirus vendors have something that resembles this in at some portion of their solution. It is often found in the web-protection side, which can easily be disabled if necessary.
zamalek 7y ago
A few years back ESET MitM traffic (this can be disabled, but was the default), I'm not sure what the situation is now as I since switched to Defender precisely because of the MitM "feature."
- alibert 7y ago
  I'm using ESET Nod32 and it's still on by default but it can be easily deactivated in the settings panel. Unfortunately, Defender is still the worse in system performance impact (1) and I can't bear it especially when you do `npm ci` or the like. Or if you are into gaming, launching Steam with/without Defender enabled and you see 10-20 secs launch time difference. I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't focus on that. They reached good detection rate but the slowdown induced by Defender still make other AVs worth it (same good detection rate but with less performance impact). [1] https://www.av-comparatives.org/tests/performance-test-april-2019/ https://www.av-comparatives.org/tests/performance-test-april...

Arubis 7y ago

To answer the last, at this point, you install (or have preinstalled) AV to comply with enterprise IT policies.

davrosthedalek 7y ago
Or be protected from bank fraud. Not that the AV will stop it, but having no AV gives the banks a reason to reject the claim. At least with DB in Germany. But they accept Windows Defender!
- klingonopera 7y ago
  German banks and technology are terrible! They're now using an app for authentication, that you can only get from Google's PlayStore or Apple's App Store. Germany, the country of data protection, and yet their banks force you to use Google/Apple. Oh sure, I can use terminals or pay money for a hardware device whose manufacturer has an exclusive contract with the bank, but this is absurd considering all they'd have to do is provide a channel for getting the APK straight from their own servers instead of through Google. ...or at least give me an SHA256 of the APK, so I can really be sure that when I use a 3rd party app to download it, I'm not getting a Trojan or something.
  - davrosthedalek 7y ago
    True. I guess they have to go through Apple's app store anyway, but they could offer the APK on their website. On the other hand, I can set up a recurring payment, for free, from one account to a different account, at a different bank. In the US, my bank sends a check. Per snail-mail. (Also: photoTAN is great. Could please all banks do that if they need an app anyway?)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- DavideNL 7y ago
  > but having no AV gives the banks a reason to reject the claim a good reason to only do banking on an iPad/iPhone...

zaarn 7y ago

If you use Windows, use Windows Defender. It doesn't MitM your connections and has a comparable detection rates for 0days and common malware to all other modern AVs. Microsoft has put a lot of work into making Defender as secure as possible (you can even run it inside a VM so any exploit of defender is just trapped inside a HyperV VM instead of your system). There is no point in installing any other AV vendor; they all suck, their software sucks, they ask way more than it's worth (nothing) and they frequently break security measures of software all over the ecosystem (some AVs still disable ASLR/KASLR to make injecting their DLL into all processes easier)

mkl 7y ago
Also, Microsoft has an incentive to eliminate viruses and malware completely - to make their OS safer. Third party AV companies rely on continuing threats to stay in business. I'm not saying AV companies hold back or help malware out, I'm saying Microsoft has good reason to throw huge resources at the problem as a whole.
- FloayYerBoat 7y ago
  ...and to build on your comment: Incentive to not slow down the performance of the OS while protecting it.
  - duxup 7y ago
    That was what caught my eye about MS's antivirus offerings from the start. I was really impressed how well it ran without me ever noticing. I got a new laptop from work recently and I didn't spend a great deal of time looking it over as i was busy and ... of course I hit some random performance problems as McAfee was abusing my machine while I was trying to work. Endlessly installing antivirus programs is getting pretty old.
    - safeplanet-fesa 7y ago
      I had to help some regular computer user to clean their computer; one of the user's requests was to "fix" their McAfee, meaning, to update the subscription and solve other "security threats" (not viruses) that McAfee reported. After seeing how indecent this antivirus is, how it uses real intimidation, and is very intrusive with constant pop-ups, we settled on not continuing the subscription and getting rid of it altogether.

joobus 7y ago

I know Avast hijacks https traffic.

_wolfie_ 7y ago
Yeah. And it even shows popup stating "Your browsing is insecure, update to avast premium" or something like that. Funny thing is, it happens (the popup) way more often when in internet banking or on porn sites. Kinda creepy.

hs86 7y ago

Some time ago I tried Bitdefender on Windows and it immediately MitMed itself so that it could append green check marks after every search result on Google to signal me that that site is 'safe'. There was no browser extension from Bitdefender involved and it applied to all installed browsers. Maybe browsers and Microsoft should actively fight this?? There is also AdGuard for Windows/Mac/Android which does this in order to block ads without the involvement of a browser extension. While this sounds like a bad alternative to uBlock Origin, it could be a necessary workaround in the future if Google succeeds with their Manifest V3 'conspiracy' against ad blockers. On Android it is also a better alternative to DNS/hosts based ad blockers because it won't leave blank ad placeholders in Chrome.

mercules 7y ago

Most AntiVirus vendors have something that resembles this in at some portion of their solution. It is often found in the web-protection side, which can easily be disabled if necessary.

zamalek 7y ago

A few years back ESET MitM traffic (this can be disabled, but was the default), I'm not sure what the situation is now as I since switched to Defender precisely because of the MitM "feature."

alibert 7y ago
I'm using ESET Nod32 and it's still on by default but it can be easily deactivated in the settings panel. Unfortunately, Defender is still the worse in system performance impact (1) and I can't bear it especially when you do `npm ci` or the like. Or if you are into gaming, launching Steam with/without Defender enabled and you see 10-20 secs launch time difference. I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't focus on that. They reached good detection rate but the slowdown induced by Defender still make other AVs worth it (same good detection rate but with less performance impact). [1] https://www.av-comparatives.org/tests/performance-test-april-2019/ https://www.av-comparatives.org/tests/performance-test-april...