Any opinions of "AOL Antivirus" product ?

[Al Dykes]

I just converted a AOL dial-up user to broadband. He's keeping his
AOL subscription (he actually ordered BB thru AOL) but I've shown him
that he no longer uses the AOL browser to search the net. All his
email comes thru AOL, so it's fairly-well filtered.

His machine as AOL's antivirus process installed in it, which I've
never heard discussed. How good is it if the PC is going to
browse the net without going thu AOL's system ?

I assume it's being updated as long as he keeps his AOL mail
subscription.

FWIW He's behind a router firewall.

 

[kurt wismer]

Al Dykes wrote:
[snip]

His machine as AOL's antivirus process installed in it, which I've
never heard discussed. How good is it if the PC is going to
browse the net without going thu AOL's system ?

aol doesn't make it's own anti-virus product as far as i know... it
probably is just a repackaged version of someone elses product... find
out who's and you should more easily find out what the general
consensus is on it...

 

[mzlindyone]

I just converted a AOL dial-up user to broadband. He's keeping his
AOL subscription (he actually ordered BB thru AOL) but I've shown him
that he no longer uses the AOL browser to search the net.

He does if he's got AOL open and types in that address bar...
He could also open an independent browser copy - NS, IE, whatever -
and do it that way.
BTW, "AOL's browser" is IE. The biggest difference is the connection
through AOL's web proxies.

All his
email comes thru AOL, so it's fairly-well filtered.

Except when the attachment scanner is broken.

His machine as AOL's antivirus process installed in it, which I've
never heard discussed. How good is it if the PC is going to
browse the net without going thu AOL's system ?

Do you actually mean AOL Spyware Protection, or the anti*virus*
subscription they offer by the month? The Antivirus is McAfee 8.0.
It's the same McAfee 8.0 as any other except for the update process.
Avoid the spyware thing like the plague - if he's got that, uninstall
it now.

I assume it's being updated as long as he keeps his AOL mail
subscription.

It'll be updated as long as he's an AOL subscriber and pays the bill,
and it can connect to McAfee's update servers via AOL. That's been an
issue recently, but I think it's cleared up now. It looks like
McAfee, despite dealing with AOL traffic for several years, failed to
anticipate the volume. That's just my guess from the problems
reported.

FWIW He's behind a router firewall.

Carol

 

[Kevin]

Do you actually mean AOL Spyware Protection, or the anti*virus*
subscription they offer by the month? The Antivirus is McAfee 8.0.
It's the same McAfee 8.0 as any other except for the update process.
Avoid the spyware thing like the plague - if he's got that, uninstall
it now.

Why?? What's the consensus about "AOL Spyware Protection"?? I don't
understand..

 

[mzlindyone]

Why?? What's the consensus about "AOL Spyware Protection"?? I don't
understand..

In the beginning...

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/internetprivacy/2004-01-07-aol-vs-spyware_x.htm
You'll notice there AOL is playing "mine is bigger" with MSN. These
things are usually over-hyped IMO.

So an "AOL face" is put on the product and it enters beta testing -
evidently without any kind of alpha testing because the first clue of
problems is destruction of the chat and IM loggers from most AOL
software versions as "malicious keyloggers". The rest I'd call a
comedy of errors, but it's not funny. At one point UK beta advised
their testers to uninstall the monster and forget about it. As far as
I can tell, this program encompasses all the bad aspects of every
spyware remover that exists, from false positives to missed detections
to ... well it hasn't deleted anyone's user.dat yet, that I know of.
=)