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Why does Webroot SecureAnywhere get a bad rep?
I've watched a few video reviews of security software on YouTube, and Webroot SecureAnywhere seems to do relatively poorly: not the worst, but relatively mediocre overall.
I decided to trial it for myself, and so was not expecting much. But I'm actually fairly impressed. It is very light-weight on system resources, the interface is fairly attractive and functional in my opinion, and it offers quite a lot of features. On install, it offered to randomize its install directory and executable file name, which may not be unique, but I thought was a cool idea to evade malware that attempts to attack security software... There is also a "white list only" option in heuristics, its own firewall with outbound restriction options, a control panel for active processes, and Webroot Infrared which is supposed to provide advanced detection of zero-day malware.
Of course that's all well and good, but what about its actual detection performance against actual live malware "in the wild". That's one area in which it seemed to fall down in the YouTube reviews I watched... I'm not a malware professional nor even an IT professional, but I did do my own detection test with Webroot SecureAnywhere on a 765 file malware pack. The detection rate was 97%, which is right up there with several of my other favorite security products: ESET NOD32 and Emsisoft Anti-Malware. The results I saw online suggested the detection rate might be as low as in the 30% - 40% range, which is obviously pretty poor. I'm sure there is going to be variability in testing due to limited sample sizes relative to the vast amounts of malware out there. But that kind of difference begs the question if I'm looking at the same product [or maybe the reviews I saw did not have all detection options enabled?].
And from what I understand, SecureAnywhere can also function as a real-time companion Antivirus, much like Malwarebytes and Zemana, etc. That is, it seems to be compatible with most other AVs, and because it is so light-weight, will not noticeably impact system performance. So one could conceivably use SecureAnywhere to complement another AV product, which I think could be a very strong defense indeed.
The only "flaky" behavior I've noticed during my brief trial to date, is that one time I wanted to delete all of the files in quarantine because it had over 700 items due to the test I performed with the 765 sample malware pack. Well, there is an option to select all items, and then another button to delete. I tried this several times, and it appeared the files were being deleted, but seconds later they would reappear in quarantine. I had to exit the quarantine, then come back,and then I was finally able to really delete all items. Strange.
Anyway, I'm not trying to do an advertisement for Webroot, but rather solicit any other opinions on the software, positive or negative. Very curious as to why my experience seems very positive overall, but reviews I've seen are fairly negative.
Thanks!
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