What The @#$#%#^% Is Going On With Malwarebytes

firefox said:

I thought they were located in California...

Inside joke - Marcin is from Illinois (I beleive, memory is getting fuzzy), and he attended UI, which is where I was considering going for my Ph. D, and where my Dad also got his Ph. D.

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
Anyone willing to use beta updates get what happens :)

As far as updating automatically
mbam's default setting to update every hour is pretty bazaar and should be switched to once a day instead to lower ones chances of catching a bad update.

By all accounts though system images weekly would limit effects greatly :)

Anyone using Windows gets what they deserve. Yeah, that is a l*nix / Apple fanboy quote, and yours just sounded suspiciously like a fanboy. Think about that for a moment.

swarfega said:

The two things that keep me using it are its solid detection and lifetime license that I got before they changed. None of its competitors offer the same long license.

I find myself checking it regularly to see if its updating and functioning as expected.

I would use it without the lifetime license because of its solid detection, but I also use it because of the community, and the quick fixes when a problem arises.

Porthos said:

Nothing about what happend was releated to any BETA.


You can change that setting if you wish. if you wish to lower your chances of that bad database. With as many updates a day(15 or so) I personally like the hourly.


Best answer for computer users

All of the above. I prefer to continual update checks because I'm more protected from 0-day discoveries than I am if I check only once a day.

Golden said:

Is that really the case though @johngalt ?

Being a long time user of various AV products including MSE and Norton on various systems in recent years, I don't recall them having quite the significant impact when major updates fail. Maybe I missed that, but happy to stand corrected.

I started using NAV when it was NAV for DOs 4.5 (?). I also worked for various companies, including IBM Global Services, that made use of Symantec Antivirus Corporate edition, which I ran for multiple years on my computers ~15 years ago - I've watched Norton and Sav CE completely hose corporate workstations and end users' machines right in front of my eyes. The biggest detriment was when they decided that they were going to start managing spyware and crapware - saw and read about many, many machines that went stupid because the definitions were detecting legitimate program installs bundled with Spyware / adware, and hosing the entire program instead of just the *ware components.

With M$E, when it first came out, I was the biggest proponent - but M$ let it slide into oblivion while pushing Defender instead. Last I used M$E (on Win7) it was regarded as *THE* joke AV solution. Although, I will say that M$E in its short life definitely on had 1 really bad update - the rest of the issues were all ßeta version issues, IIRC....

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
I wouldn't consider either one of those examples even close to mbam's effectiveness
Norton being a joke and MSE bottom of the barrel :)

Actually, Norton was the premier AV of its day - you have to realize that it has been around for close to 30 years now. And M$E was, also, when introduced, that hands down best AV - it was lighter on resources than any other AV at the time of its introduction, and sported equal (if not surpassing) detection records to every other AV it was compared to.

Judging the past performance of either product on its performance today is a fallacy. You have to realize that M$E came out after Malwarebytes did, but not by much (about 1.5-2 years, IIRC), and if we still had access to the old MBAM forums, you'd see where nearly every security researcher as well as malware removal specialist was recommending the combination of MBAM and M$E.

Thanks for the info @johngalt

Interestingly, in all my time troubleshooting BSOD's over at SF, the only AV I ever saw that never triggered a BSOD was MSE (makes perfect sense) and MBAM.....some that were apparently caused by MBAM were in fact because of outdated network drivers. Things may have changed since then, but I do recall never finding a BSOD caused by those two.

Interesting. I am not surprised that all of the BSODs that came in originally pointing to MB(AM) were in fact not MB(AM) related. I wold not have guessed that network (and other) drivers were the culprit, though.

SODs are one aspect of Windows which I paid little attention to because I encountered them so rarely myself, and when I did encounter them, I usually did my own research and figured out or, (in rare instances) clean installed and made it go away.

Of course, with Windows 10, and especially with the Insider Preview builds, I'm rather sure that I've encountered more of those little buggers than I ever did in all my time running 2000 Pro, XP, and 7 combined lol.

I've not had a BSOD in ??? (years, maybe) and I've been running Malware Bytes for a very long time, on multiple PC's, running multiple OS's. The program itself seems to be pretty solid.

I would have to advise looking elsewhere for a problem.