[BrianMJC]

Does anyone know of any reliable online reviews or lab tests that rate Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0 (not BOClean or AntiVirus) on its antimalware scanning abilities (and not just for its firewall capabilities), particularly against spyware and adware? If not, do you have any personal feedback on it?

I am asking because I've been testing various security programs (as opposed to a suite) on my machine lately, with the latest versions of ESET NOD32, Comodo and Spyware Doctor (the version without antivirus) currently installed. These have all been given top scores in various lab tests and online reviews I've read. NOD32 was ranked tops by AV-Comparatives for antivirus capabilities, but lags in antispyware/adware capabilities, so I got Spyware Doctor as a secondary proactive measure. But the combination of all three is eating an enormous amount of RAM, and I'd like to drop Spyware Doctor (at least proactively) if NOD32 + Comodo can do a similarly effective job by themselves.

If you know of another firewall (free or not) that is as good as Comodo or better that comes with well reviewed or tested antispyware/adware capabilities, I'll be happy to reconsider my current trial setup. I am in favor of keeping NOD32 Antivirus at this time, so I'm not considering security suites for myself (ESET's suite's firewall is not as highly regarded as its antivirus component from what I recall reading).

Thanks!

[Gizzy]

A firewall doesn't really protect against spyware/adaware,

firewalls are like internet traffic cops you use firewalls to set up who or what programs are allowed to get in or out of your computer,

the spyware/adaware protection in comodo's firewall is the defense+ feature defense+ is a HIPS (Host Intrusion Prevention System) not all firewalls have HIPS included in them,

HIPS are excellent against spyware/adaware and even virus infections as long as you know how to answer the pop ups they give you,

basically you get a 50/50 chance that you'll answer right when it pops up asking you about a new program that wants to either run, monitor your keystrokes, set a global hook, etc, you have to either allow or block that request,

comodo's pop ups are usually pretty helpful on whether you should allow or block a programs request and you could always google some thing you don't understand before either allowing it to run or not,

the latest versions of comodo firewall have an on-demand version of comodo's anti-virus that you could run every so often as a second opinion to NOD32 though comodo's anti-virus doesn't have that great of a detection rate yet since they're still working on it,

there's no tests on comodo firewall out there yet that I know of since it's still pretty new I think it only came out of beta in november.

NOD32 I've never used but always heard it was very light on system resources and I am usind comodo firewall pro v3.0 and it is light on resources but I've always heard that spyware doctor was heavy on resources,

which version of spyware doctor were/are you using the free or paid?

spysweeoer is supposed to have good detection but like spyware doctor I've heard that it slows down your pc, maybe not as much as spyware doctor? I'm not sure, http://www.webroot.com/En_US/index.html

and you could try out spyware terminator http://www.spywareterminator.com/ last time I used spyware terminator it wasn't that heavy on resources though that was awhile ago and it's free I don't know of any tests for it though.

[BrianMJC]

Hi Gizzy,

Thanks for the info. The latest AV-Comparatives tests (as of now, the August & November 2007 tests) demonstrated that NOD32 was superior to all other anti-malware programs by a landslide when it came to proactive detection of unknown threats and was the only one to report zero false positives. It was also relatively comparable to the best when it came to on-demand scans of known threats, but was relatively weak on detecting and removing spyware/adware. I tried Spyware Doctor (free trial version 5.5) because it was recently rated the best in terms of effectiveness by PC Magazine, and I wanted to compensate for NOD32's weakness. I've found one lab test by matousec.com which demonstrated that CFP 3.0 is excellent as a firewall, but can't find any lab tests on its anti-malware capabilities, guess I'll have to wait and see since it's very new. I did find a very favorable review of it overall from PC Magazine.

You're right, both NOD32 and Comodo are very light and Spyware Doctor was the resource hog of the three... it upped my page file from the 310's-320's to over 500 MB! And by the way, I noticed in your sig that you use Spybot and Ad-Aware. I was using both until very recently (still have them on in fact) but started looking elsewhere because they both have not been reviewed well in recent years. I recall reading some years ago the combination of the two worked well together in that they covered each others weaknesses, but don't know if this remains true. Do you think they're still very effective in combination?

[Gizzy]

Yes I've always heard that NOD32 was an excellent anti-virus,

I wouldn't suggest using the free version of spyware doctor if you still have plans of using it since most of spyware doctors shields aren't installed with the free version only the paid and with the free version you only get about 200,000 spyware/adware signatures compared to spyware doctor's normal 600,000 spyware/adware signatures,

I'm not sure if there will be that many spyware/adware tests for comodo firewall since it doesn't use signatures to detect spyware/adware the person testing it's abilities would have to test every single piece of spyware/adware individually compared to just letting it scan here's a link to a forum with some people testing it http://forums.comodo.com/leak_testin...-t19073.0.html
comodo failed at first but with a recent update comodo blocks the rootkit they were testing,

I don't think Ad-Aware is that great anymore I've heard people saying that it's detection is poor and the newest version Ad-Aware 2007 is supposedly bloated though I do think that spybot is still pretty good,

the main reason I have spybot and ad-aware is just because I like using and trying out different malware scanners,

but there's superantispyware it's supposed to be better at detecting and removing spyware/adware than Spybot S&D or Ad-Aware the paid version has real-time protection and a lifetime license or you can just use the free version as a scanner it's supposed to be light on resources and the new version coming out soon (it's still in beta) is supposed to be even lighter than the current version,

here's a thread from another forum very much like yours here http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showt...hlight=defense

[BrianMJC]

I think I'll skip Spyware Doctor, for the time being at least. It requires immense resources and apparently lacks a means to use it purely on-demand, like Spybot and Ad-Aware (you can deactivate the System Guard component but it remains in the system tray so I assume it's still running something).

I always relied more on Spybot anyway for frequent scans, making a more occasional Ad-Aware scan, just in case. Ad-Aware 2007 was not well received in a recent comparison review of nine anti-spyware/adware programs.

The PC Magazine review I linked to previously mentioned that the real-time measures of CFP 3 include monitoring events like registry modification attempts, file mod attempts, and so forth, but I didn't realize it doesn't employ signatures. That would explain both the program's lightweight quality and the lack of anti-malware scanning lab tests. According to this review, Comodo's real-time measures were enough to stop just about everything they could throw at it, so maybe I'll just keep CFP and NOD32 real-time and either go with something lightweight like Superantispyware or just run frequent anti-malware on-demand scans. I'll look into the two you mentioned and the forum links, thanks again.

[Gizzy]

You're Welcome,

Good luck with what you decide to go with

[golferbob]

i switched back to the old 2.?? . i like it better on my xp. it starts up & shutsdown faster.


http://www.filehippo.com/download_comodo/?2252