what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?

"Max" wrote in message

>
>
> "A.H." wrote:
>
>> What does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?
>>
>> Does Windows Defender protects against all the known virus, spyware &
>> adware?
>>
>> That means I no longer need Norton or MacAfee or Micro Trend Antivirus?
>>
>> I believe that Windows Defender only protects your computer against
>> spywares. I can't be sure though, because it says 'spywares and other
>> malicious softwares', so it'd be best if you don't take my word.
>
> In any case, even if Windows Defender defends against adwares, malwares
> and
> spywares, it's always best to have multi-layered protection for your
> computer
> because Windows Defender (or any other anti-malicious-software tools out
> there) cannot detect threats every single time.
>
> Cheers.

Not really. I always belief the minimum software stuff in your system is the
best. These Anti-Virus programs takes up lots of programming powers. And at
least I know of two, Micro Trend in particular, their Vista Anti-Virus
program is itself defective.

Micro Trend Anti-virus Program 2008 blocks Vista program menu change, even
it you disable it. That means, even you delete program menu entries, it will
keep coming back, in your next reboot. Also, it purposely sort your program
menu, even if you re-order it. Our email questions to them went un-answered.
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

It scans for Adware & Malware. You would need a separate Anti-Virus. A
good free one is AVG Free. Defender works fine, but you may want to run
a second anti-spyware program (Spybot, AdAware). You don't have to run
them as realtime scanners. You can just run them as needed, probably
once a week.

--
Dustin Harper
dharper DeleteThis @vistarip.com
http://www.vistarip.com


A.H. wrote:
> What does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?
>
> Does Windows Defender protects against all the known virus, spyware &
> adware?
>
> That means I no longer need Norton or MacAfee or Micro Trend Antivirus?
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

Another thing I like least of these Anti-Virus program is, they always seems
to activate itself and starts scanning the most busy time when you need done
something quick. Even if you turn off the scheduled scanning, but, you have
NO option to turn off the self activated system scanning. This goes for
McAfee and Micro Trend. We drop Norton years ago, because it failed to pick
up all the sypware and adware - and require seperate packages.
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

Another thing I like least of these Anti-Virus program is, they always seems
to activate itself and starts scanning at the most busy time when you need
to do
something quick. Even if you turn off the scheduled scanning, but, you have
NO option to turn off the self activated system scanning. This goes for
McAfee and Micro Trend. We drop Norton years ago, because it failed to pick
up all the sypware and adware - and require seperate packages.
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html

"Spybot Search and Destroy" is the proper name; "Spybot" is a trojan!
Use the above link!

For anti-virus, use Avast Free 4 Home. It is non-intrusive, and is not
resource hungry.
AND it works!

Defender misses so, so much, and is a drag on your comp!

"A.H." wrote:

> What does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?
>
> Does Windows Defender protects against all the known virus, spyware &
> adware?
>
> That means I no longer need Norton or MacAfee or Micro Trend Antivirus?
>
>
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 07:48:37 -0800, "A.H." wrote:

> What does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?
>
> Does Windows Defender protects against all the known virus, spyware &
> adware?


No, not at all. Three points.

1. It protects against non-viral malware (spyware and adware) only. It
provides *no* antivirus protection.

2. No such product, regardless of what kind or kinds of malware
(viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware, etc.) it protects against,
is perfect and nothing protects against "all the known" anythings.

3. Particularly when it comes to adware and spyware, no single product
is anywhere near perfect. Note what Eric Howes, who has done extensive
testing on Anti-Spyware products, states:

"No single anti-spyware scanner removes everything. Even the
best-performing anti-spyware scanner in these tests missed fully one
quarter of the "critical" files and Registry entries" See
http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-test-guide.htm

You should run at least two anti-spyware products, not just Windows
Defender.


> That means I no longer need Norton or MacAfee or Micro Trend Antivirus?


No, it doesn't mean anything like that at all. You still need an
anti-virus program (but preferably not Norton or McAfee, probably the
two *worst* anti-virus programs). And you still need at least one
other anti-spyware program.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

"Mick Murphy" wrote:

> http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html
>
> "Spybot Search and Destroy" is the proper name; "Spybot" is a trojan!
> Use the above link!
>
> For anti-virus, use Avast Free 4 Home. It is non-intrusive, and is not
> resource hungry.
> AND it works!
>
> Defender misses so, so much, and is a drag on your comp!
>
> "A.H." wrote:
>
> > What does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?
> >
> > Does Windows Defender protects against all the known virus, spyware &
> > adware?
> >
> > That means I no longer need Norton or MacAfee or Micro Trend Antivirus?
> >
> > Hmm. Avast Antivirus, just so you know, scans your computer from the time you switch on your computer to the time you switch it off. Don't get me wrong though, I'm a pretty huge fan of Avast and I still use it.

Another great thing about Avast is that the interface is pretty intuitive.
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

Defender is not a universal medecine for all the virus, spyware & adware
problems. It is a good software that finds a lot of spyware/malware, but it
is NOT an antivirus. It's not a firewall neither.

If you have only Defender installed (and no other security software) then it
make your computer an easy pray for viruses and attacks.

Personally I use Defender once every few days to make a scan of the whole
system. Also I have Ad-Aware installed that I run once a week. It is similar
to Defender, but it's always good to have an alternative since no one can
garantee that Defender (or any other antispyware) will find every single
threat in your system.

As antivirus I use AVIRA, a really cool piece of software that never let me
down for the past 2,5 years (I used it on XP, and now I have it on Vista).
They update their virus definitions several times a day and they have a
quite powerful scanner that scans on the fly every single file you access
(and it is not a resource hog like Norton of Trend Micro). There is a free
edition at http://www.free-av.com/ (for personal use only) and a commercial
version at http://www.avira.com/en/pages/index.php (the commercial version
has a built-in antispyware, antiphishing, firewall etc... but the antivirus
scanner is the same as in the free version).

Another thing that IMO every computer should have is a firewall. You have a
very wide spread of possibilities (including free ones). It's up to you to
make a choice. I would recommend Zone Alarm Free that I use for about 1 year
and find simple to configure and use. A firewall protects you from unwanted
connection from (an to) the Internet. You can control what installed program
can or cannot go online without your permission, update itself, or (in the
case of spyware) detect a software that tries to send gathered information
from your system somewhere (troyans, keyloggers etc...). In a few words, you
know what's going through your connection.

What's been said in a previous post about "the less software installed - the
best" is not true. The less security software you have, the more
mal/spy/ad/ware software you'll get. Of course there is no sense in
installing 3 antiviruses, 5 antispywares an 2 firewalls (that would look
like paranoia ) but I would recommend to any user to install
a) an antivirus software (and update the virus definitions daily),
b) a firewall (or at least turn on the windows firewall, it's not as bad as
a lot of people say or think)
c) an antispyware (at least use Defender a couple time a week, and don't
forget to update the definitions here too!).

Wow! that's a lot of letters I typed here, hopefully someone will find them
useful!


"A.H." píse v diskusním príspevku

> What does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?
>
> Does Windows Defender protects against all the known virus, spyware &
> adware?
>
> That means I no longer need Norton or MacAfee or Micro Trend Antivirus?
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

momo wrote:

< snip >
> As antivirus I use AVIRA, a really cool piece of software that never
> let me down for the past 2,5 years (I used it on XP, and now I have
> it on Vista).

Could you tell me how many viruses this cool piece of software has found in the last 2.5 years ?
If it hasn't let you down, then it must have found lots of virusus.
Please post details, you should find lots of information in the antivirus log file.
Thanks very much.
..
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

"bomb#20" wrote in message

> momo wrote:
>
> Could you tell me how many viruses this cool piece of software has found
> in the last 2.5 years ?
> If it hasn't let you down, then it must have found lots of virusus.
> Please post details, you should find lots of information in the antivirus
> log file.
> Thanks very much.
> .

I our case in this office with around over 20+ computers, no virus was ever
found for 3 years since I am here. We have Norton, McAfee and Micro Trend.
Only those so call virus was found were cookies.
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

"ARH" wrote in message
> "bomb#20" wrote in message
>
>> momo wrote:
>>
>> Could you tell me how many viruses this cool piece of software has found
>> in the last 2.5 years ?
>> If it hasn't let you down, then it must have found lots of virusus.
>> Please post details, you should find lots of information in the antivirus
>> log file.
>> Thanks very much.

> I our case in this office with around over 20+ computers, no virus was ever
> found for 3 years since I am here. We have Norton, McAfee and Micro Trend.
> Only those so call virus was found were cookies.

You use three AVs on one machine? Or, those three are used separately
on different machines?

I certainly hope your IT guy doesn't run those three in real-time
at once. That's just ignorant.

I use NOD32 on all my machines and ClamWin as an on-demand
second opinion.


-Michael
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

"MICHAEL" wrote in message

> "ARH" wrote in message
>
>> "bomb#20" wrote in message
>>
>>> momo wrote:
>> I our case in this office with around over 20+ computers, no virus was
>> ever found for 3 years since I am here. We have Norton, McAfee and Micro
>> Trend. Only those so call virus was found were cookies.
>
> You use three AVs on one machine? Or, those three are used separately
> on different machines?
>
> I certainly hope your IT guy doesn't run those three in real-time
> at once. That's just ignorant.
>
> I use NOD32 on all my machines and ClamWin as an on-demand
> second opinion.
>
>
> -Michael

No, we have over 30+ machines. Each machine only use one antivirus program.
Typically these antivirus programs comes pre-installed in the systems, such
as Dell or HP...
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for? 

"ARH" wrote in message
> "MICHAEL" wrote in message
>
>> "ARH" wrote in message
>>
>>> "bomb#20" wrote in message
>>>
>>>> momo wrote:
>>> I our case in this office with around over 20+ computers, no virus was
>>> ever found for 3 years since I am here. We have Norton, McAfee and Micro
>>> Trend. Only those so call virus was found were cookies.
>>
>> You use three AVs on one machine? Or, those three are used separately
>> on different machines?
>>
>> I certainly hope your IT guy doesn't run those three in real-time
>> at once. That's just ignorant.
>>
>> I use NOD32 on all my machines and ClamWin as an on-demand
>> second opinion.

> No, we have over 30+ machines. Each machine only use one antivirus program.
> Typically these antivirus programs comes pre-installed in the systems, such
> as Dell or HP...

IMO, using the same AV for all computers makes much
more sense. Having some type of free AV for an on-demand
"second opinion" can be helpful, too.


-Michael
 >> Stay informed about: what does Windows Defender really protects and scans for?