For all of you MSE lovers...

MSE has sucked for months...unlike all the other paid solutions that have sucked in one way or another for years.
 
Sucked for months....?

AV-TEST.org has showed MSE has been one of the worst performing AV for the past two years for zero day and new malware.

It's upside is low false positives, pretty good signature detection of well known malware, and it's very easy to use.
 
Yeah, MSE is not the best and never was. It's certainly not the worst anti-malware product available.

I like it because it's feather weight and totally non-intrusive. If I had risky behaviors, like using certain popular web browsers, total warez/porn monkey, "crack" addict and whatever, I'd certainly be a lot more paranoid and selective about security installed.

In any case, MSE is good in that it at least gives people protection against common threats by default and without costing anything.
 
MSE has probably saved billions of infections just because it was installed by default, or was from MS and was thus trusted. The fact that such a popular AV (and because its the default and from MS) has been targeted by malware is no surprise.
 
MrCrispy said:
MSE has probably saved billions of infections just because it was installed by default, or was from MS and was thus trusted. The fact that such a popular AV (and because its the default and from MS) has been targeted by malware is no surprise.
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Exactly. It really has helped in a ton of scenarios where people stop paying for AV or just forgo it all together.
 
MrCrispy said:
MSE has probably saved billions of infections
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I haven't seen it prevent much.
I think it's probably saved some infections, but billions? More like dozens. :eek:

It's better than nothing, that's about it.
 
zero2dash said:
I haven't seen it prevent much.
I think it's probably saved some infections, but billions? More like dozens. :eek:

It's better than nothing, that's about it.
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Combined with something like OpenDNS, it's not a bad first line of defense for customers that don't want to spend any money. I've had pretty good luck with it for light internet users ( although, ya, the heavy web/porn/warez users still need something beefier ).
 
zero2dash said:
I haven't seen it prevent much.
I think it's probably saved some infections, but billions? More like dozens. :eek:

It's better than nothing, that's about it.
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That's such a idiotic stupid statement it makes me laugh. MSE is fine for people like me who don't go to scuzzy sites, download things that shouldn't be downloaded, etc. It's lightweight and has a very low amount of false positives (but this also means some real positives get in which is why MSE is ranked low).
 
XOR != OR said:
Combined with something like OpenDNS, it's not a bad first line of defense for customers that don't want to spend any money. I've had pretty good luck with it for light internet users ( although, ya, the heavy web/porn/warez users still need something beefier ).
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I've had pretty good luck with that combo (although I recently switched to dydns internet guide from opendns -I couldn't add any more networks on the free account).
 
I've settled with MSE because I'd get something awesome, like ESET, and it would work great-- then they'd push an update that takes it from lean and sleek, and voila, using it completely bogs your system down and it starts seeing games as viruses!

It sucks to pay money and have that happen.

It's hard to mix good with lean and reliable, it seems.
 
Phog said:
http://lifehacker.com/microsoft-admits-that-third-party-antivirus-is-more-eff-1441135677

Took them a while to confirm it, but MSE has sucked for months.
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If what you gathered when you read that article is that MSE 'sucked'/'sucks', you've clearly missed the point of MSE altogether.

MSE is designed to be light, unintrusive, and most important, conservative. The idea is that if MSE can check those three boxes, it can be on by default. So instead of shipping wide-open for an attack, Windows computers come locked down with an effective baseline.

If you're the kind of person who is generally highly susceptible to virus infections, it might be wise to employ a far more aggressive solution. But out of box, Windows with MSE/Defender turned on, UAC turned on, Windows Firewall turned on, and Windows Updates configured to install automatically, someone who doesn't bother or know to bother securing their computer will be far safer than if they had nothing. If MSE were as aggressive as the third-party wares, Microsoft wouldn't be able to enable it by default (due to the problems aggressive AV software introduces), and those people would be left far more vulnerable.


And in our modern day and age, it really isn't wise to make your AV software the cornerstone of your security plan anyways. There are far more important steps to implement first, such as creating a standard user account for everyday use, setting up a backup and recovery plan (automatic, preferably), and making sure your software is up to date. Your anti-virus should only ever be a last resort, and if that's not what it is, you're doing it wrong.

JayJapanB said:
Annnd I'm sold.
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It's nice that you were sold on an understatement. He said 'low false positives', but the reality is that due to MSE's use of strict definitions far more heavily than hit-or-miss heuristics, MSE encounters virtually no false positives.
 
I think we all secretly knew that it wasn't exactly the best, but hey, it was free and it worked alright.
 
If you're interested, here's MS's follow-up from the malware protection team. Overall seems reasonable, and has some informative case study information linked in it.
 
wilson0416 said:
MSE is free
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And I'm sold.

Been using MSE years and have yet to have some kind of infection and it's actually caught a couple things trying to install. I'm sure it's not the best but it's been pretty good for me and it's free so I ain't complaining.
 
If you want to look at really bad stuff just download Virtualbox or VMware, install Linux (less prone to virus) or Windows inside the VW and surf nasty shit on that. If it goes bad, you just wipe it out and start over.

Totally free and much safer (though nothing is 100%).

This is how I surf file sharing websites...mostly because there are 10 different buttons that say "download" and inevitably I hit the wrong one :(
 
So what is the best free AV you guys recommend now? I been recommending MSE, Malware-bytes & Firefox combo for users for years with hardly any issues for my clients.
 
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