I’ve been wondering this for awhile now. Spybot, Ad-Aware, and now MS–all free, all complicated, all effective to some deegree. Norton and McAfee–all cost money.
Why don’t Spybot and Ad-Aware throw in viral protection too? Why doesn’t Microsoft, who could benefit the most from having everyone protected, serve up free anti-virus software along with its spyware protection?
The only thing I can imagine is the virus protection software is that much harder to write and maintain; hence, someone has to charge for it. But that doesn’t seem right.
Microsoft just recently bought a company that makes anti-virus software, so I presume we’re going to be seeing Window Screens[sup]TM[/sup] before too long.
Many times people will ask if there’s a reason aside from marketshare why there are so few Macintosh viruses and why those that do exist are mostly very old (there are absolutely zero MacOS X viruses).
One reason, seldom given adequate credit, is John Norstadt, who for about a decade maintained a free Macintosh antivirus program called Disinfectant, and every time another Mac virus cropped up he’d release another decimal-point version of Disinfectant to handle it. The Mac viruses of that era (System 3, System 4, System 6, early System 7) were moderatly prolific for a little while, but Disinfectant took the starch out of them once High School and University techroom facilitators started distributing it to their students. (This was back in the day when Macs had no hard disks so everyone had their operating system in their shirt pocket and exchanged copies – the OS was free back then too – along with fonts, disk accessories, and, umm, viruses). By the time most Macs you saw had hard disks in them, Disinfectant was standard equipment and writing Mac viruses just didn’t generate much satisfaction.
(Another key element was the Info-Mac Digest. From the time I first discovered the internet in the mid-80s until it’s long fadeout in the late 90s, Info-Mac was how you got your free tech support, your Mac news, and your freeware and shareware. It helped unify the Mac community. You’d read about a new virus in one issue and six days’ later you’d download the newest version of Disinfectant using the ftp URL posted in the next issue.)
So yes, I think getting some free (preferably open-source, hobbyist-maintained) Windows antivirus is your best hope.
IIRC, McAfee and Norton’s will soon be coming out with bundled anti-spy and anti-virus software. It’s not so much as there is a need to do it (by the looks of the issues just here on the SDMB there certainly is!), but because Microsoft has entered the picture.
Seems like I read somewhere (maybe elsewhere here!) that the reason had a legal basis–that one company writing a program that would remove both spyware and viruses could be sued by spyware companies, for “inferring” that their enabling software was a virus.
And FWIW, some companies do offer integrated services: I tried the F-Secure trial suite, and it has an adware scanner that has F-Secure’s name and color scheme on it, but has a GUI that looks and functions overall astonishingly similar to AdAware. Would one company steal another company’s product, particularly when that product’s functionality depended on regular web updates? I’d bet probably not–but if that spyware-removal program is from an outside vendor, then the antivirus company has an argument that they aren’t insinuating that spyware is equivalent to viruses.
~
Though I don’t feel I need to explain myself, I made the “witnessing” comment solely for a laugh. I didn’t see how anyone could take it any differently.
I am not a member of the staff of this board, nor should any of my statements be regarded as official business of the SDMB.
Sorry; it wasn’t intended as anything more than a light-hearted wisecrack, not unlike your own post; If I’d thought there was anything seriously wrong, I’d have reported the post and said nothing at all (which I didn’t).
Hey, I just checked out Microsoft.com, and they’re offering a beta version of an anti-spyware program. I’m going to have to check that out. I use Webroot’s spyware program, and it works, but I find it to be very intrusive. It’s constantly popping up to bother me about something. (“WARNING! A new bookmark has been added! Do you want to keep it?” Yeah, I know, you dumbass program. I added it myself using the pull-down menu.)
My WAG is antispyware apps came out of the blue, so to speak, and when it did it was free. When the big 2 (Spybot, Adaware) became, well ‘big’, the AV firms would have to put in so much effort to compeat against free programs that it was not worth it.
Also remember that M$ once included an antivirus program as part of the OS. IIRC it was DOS 6.0, and didn’t do so well.
Actually, my wife’s Fujitsu laptop came with free MS antiviral software as part of the OS (Windows XP)–I wonder if this feature is included with any other versions of XP (ie, non-Japanese)?
Most of the newer versions such as Norton Antivirus 2005 has some of the features of Spybot and Adware but only in the sense that they prevent the installation of worms and warn of suspicious activity.
While most products have historically separated Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus functions, some products DO offer both.
The “E-Accelerator” package, considered by some to be Spyware itself, is one example.
Just in case anyone’s interested, this article makes for rather depressing reading.
According to a comprehensive study of anti-spyware/anti-adware programs, it seems that most (all?) of them are far less efficient than most of us would like to believe at finding and removing the malware.
The test showed that the best program for identifying and removing adware was Giant AntiSpyware, with a success rate of 63%. This software was purchased by Microsoft, and now forms the basis of Microsoft Anti-Spyware Beta, currently available for free downbload on the MS website. Apparently, though, MS have not yet decided whether this program will still be provided free once the Beta test period expires.
The article recommends running anti-spyware programs in combination with one another to achieve better coverage. The best coverage available is a combination of Giant AntiSpyware (now MS) and Webroot Spy Sweeper, offering 70% success. The latter program costs money, and if you want the best free option, a combination of Giant (MS) and AdAware gives a 69% success rate.
The combination most often recommended on message boards is AdAware and Spybot, but the test found that using only these two programs together gives a success rate of just 54%.
The article has some good advice for protecting your computer. It also has some rather depressing comments suggesting that adware isn’t likely to go away soon:
