Free security s/w products from Comodo Group:

  • Thread starter Thread starter hummingbird
  • Start date Start date
chris said:
from another tread in this newsgroup :
Now I wont install any Comodo program anymore, reason :
http://www.spywareguide.com/product_show.php?id=1775

Melih, you know that your products are malicious and have to be shot down.
People are free to install Comodo software, but people are also free to
block Comodo software at all costs.

Again and again there are problems with your free software and every time we
read the same :
Comodo software is malicious and every time you wrote the same : trust us,
the rest of the world is wrong.
It doesn't matter which free to use Comodo product is involved; always the
same reactions.
Very, very strange that some of us don't like to try your free
softwareproducts.
Click to expand...


Chris

I do not find it strange that some people won't try our products. There
is a lot of misinformation out there and you have no way of verifying
that. So you are choosing to avoid it. I guess its understandable to a
level.

I wish you well with whatever you decide to go with.

Melih
 
Brian said:
I have Spysweeper 4.5 installed on my computer, so I decided to contact
Webroot. I have sent their technical support staff a letter requesting
clarification of this issue, and a link to your forum, and a link to the PC
World article.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much Brian.

Melih
 
hummingbird said:
Thanks. According to the spywareguide.com link provided by 'chris'
on this newsgroup, your free products do include a malicious toolbar.
Another poster has also referenced earlier debate about this problem.

Without installing one of your products I have no way to verify this
issue but Comodo need to understand that there are some razor sharp
folks on this newsgroup who can sniff out dodgy software at 1000
metres!!! It looks like Comodo is off the agenda for the moment...
Click to expand...


Hummingbird

I must respectfully disagre with your statement about the folks who can
sniff out dodgy software at 1000 metres. Anybody who classifies what we
have as adware, spyware or malicious, does not know the first thing
about computers/software and just talking non-sense!

I am open to challange by anyone, instead of reading and
re-representing mis-information here, prove me wrong by showing that
any one of our programs is adware, spyware or malicious!

Melih
 
Melinda said:
Maybe that's for older versions or something -- I just installed it and
I don't have a toolbar -- and believe me, I don't do toolbars, so I
wouldn't have installed it if I had to use one.
Click to expand...

Melinda

The toolbar, called Trusttoolbar, and is a security toolbar that
provides identity assurance. pls read my previous posting where a very
respected anti spyware company analysed the Trusttoolbar and sent an
apology letter to Comodo. It is that letter you can see in the PDF.
There has never been in any version of any Comodo product any adware,
spyware or malicious code. Never!

thanks
Melih
 
Comodo said:
Adware means the toolbar advertises something. Well i can categorically
state that it does not!

read the PDF document in this posting
http://forums.comodo.com/index.php/topic,113.0.html

You will see that respectable anti spyware companies are decent enough
to accept their mistake!

Melih
Click to expand...

I am interested in reading this document, but I'm not interested in joining
your forum. Is it possible for you to make this PDF available to those who
aren't registered members of your forum.

Thank-you
 
hummingbird said:
[snip]

[hack]
Spywareguide rates Comodo's toolbar as "adware" and "difficult to
remove." /Not/ malicious.
Click to expand...

Malicious is a subjective term. IMHO any software which quietly
installs adware without my explicit approval is malicious.
Click to expand...

Understood. (And although I believe your definition to be a tad...
draconian, I wasn't trying to debate that.) Rather, the fact that
"malware" is a partial derivative of "malicious," it damns by
association and I wanted to distance the product from that particular
word.
Click to expand...

Indeed. On a scale of maliciousness, Comodo products seem to be on
the low end. If I had a current use for any one of those I listed
earlier, I'd probably suffer the toolbar in order to get the s/w
function, although there are probably alternatives.
I'm sorry...what do you mean by "called them out?" I'd assumed you had
labeled CPF "malicious" based on someone referencing a spywareguide url.
Did I miss something?
Click to expand...

Well I started this thread by posting a list of Comodo FREE products
with a caveat that I had not installed any of them myself and other
users should therefore take care if/when installing them. 'Brian
Robertson' and then 'chris' raised the issue of Comodo products
installing toolbars (hence my term 'called them out') which apparently
are difficult to get rid of, and 'chris' referred to an earlier debate
on a.c.f. about them and on the spywareguide url.

Based upon spywareguide's comments, I took the view that Comodo
products are malicious, but as I said above - in the overall scheme of
things - low on the scale.

I wasn't aware of any of that at the time of my original posting and
your later comments about the alleged vested interests of spywareguide
is interesting, it makes me wonder who to believe - Comodo or
spywareguide. I see Comodo also have something to say on the matter.
The debate continues ...
 
[snip]
Mind you, I'm not running a personal firewall atm so...ymmv.
Click to expand...

Wow! How do you get away with that?

I've never run any anti-virus s/w on my PC and I see that as a small
risk ...but not running a firewall would seem to be courting death :-(
My ZA firewall blocks dozens of incoming probe attempts everyday.
 
Maybe that's for older versions or something -- I just installed it and
I don't have a toolbar -- and believe me, I don't do toolbars, so I
wouldn't have installed it if I had to use one.
Click to expand...

OK but "it" being which one of the Comodo products? The firewall?
 
Hummingbird

I must respectfully disagre with your statement about the folks who can
sniff out dodgy software at 1000 metres. Anybody who classifies what we
have as adware, spyware or malicious, does not know the first thing
about computers/software and just talking non-sense!

I am open to challange by anyone, instead of reading and
re-representing mis-information here, prove me wrong by showing that
any one of our programs is adware, spyware or malicious!
Click to expand...

Thanks Melih. Given the debate which has started on a.c.f. about your
products, it seems that there are some people who mis-classify.
But I stand by my earlier comment - there are some well informed folks
on a.c.f. I have found the newsgroup to be a useful resource.

What seems to have happened is that spywareguide have criticised your
products from a vested interest point of view (see Craig's comments)
and this subtlety hasn't been picked up by a few people.

Please bear in mind that it was me who posted details about your free
products originally to inform others, so I have no personal axe to
grind. Based upon recent comments, I would install any one of them if
I had a current use for them.

You might like to post the .pdf file for folks to read...
 
hummingbird said:
hummingbird said:
[snip]

[hack]

Spywareguide rates Comodo's toolbar as "adware" and "difficult to
remove." /Not/ malicious.

[snippage]
Click to expand...
Are you missing the point that I posted info about these Comodo
products and it was *two other posters* who called them out?
Click to expand...

I'm sorry...what do you mean by "called them out?" I'd assumed you had
labeled CPF "malicious" based on someone referencing a spywareguide url.
Did I miss something?
Click to expand...


Well I started this thread by posting a list of Comodo FREE products
with a caveat that I had not installed any of them myself and other
users should therefore take care if/when installing them. 'Brian
Robertson' and then 'chris' raised the issue of Comodo products
installing toolbars...
Click to expand...
Yup. I missed that. I think we're on the same page now...
...it makes me wonder who to believe - Comodo or
spywareguide...
Click to expand...

Fwiw, as spywareguide's policies stand, I'd say they're less transparent
than Comodo. Witness, for example, that Comodo reps (ie Melih) are in
here often, trying to explain in -what appears to me as- good faith. In
the end though, I don't think there are outright demons on either side
of this.

-Craig
 
hummingbird said:
[snip]

Mind you, I'm not running a personal firewall atm so...ymmv.
Click to expand...


Wow! How do you get away with that?
Click to expand...

[n.b. I wouldn't suggest this for everyone...this is an experiment]

I want to prevent unauthorized access to port addresses and services. I
also want to avoid DoS and "malicious" traffic attacks (eg smurfs,
PoD's, spoofing, SYN floods, etc).

To address these, I've
- rechecked the config of our router's firewall and,
- locked down ports & services not needed on the computer
- continue to run system-wide a/v.

It's taken a few hours of time, by far the most on reading and
re-reading what should & shouldn't be made available on a system. But,
once that's understood, it's pretty easy to do.

All of this applies to desktop systems. For our laptops, we've also run
them through the "hardening process," but we still run ZoneAlarm since
we have no control over most networks when traveling. Which reminds me
of the one thing I miss about ZA on the desktop: Getting alerts on
phone-home apps.

hth,
-Craig
 
Dewey said:
He hasn't answered you. But just a throwaway addy
got me the answer -

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=D6B664E067CCBEBB

(it's the PDF file.)
Click to expand...

Thanks Dewey.

....from a manager at Internet Security Systems to Comodo's counsel:

"Upon further review we are unable to find evidence that the toolbar
meets any of our established criteria, and have therefore removed from
our database...We apologize for any inconvenience."

A pretty diffident apology considering the grief they cause...

-Craig
 
I wasn't aware of any of that at the time of my original posting and
your later comments about the alleged vested interests of spywareguide
is interesting, it makes me wonder who to believe - Comodo or
spywareguide. I see Comodo also have something to say on the matter.
Click to expand...

Also, it seems a bit suspicious to me that Comodo, in its attempted defense
of its marketing practices, that it always links to posts on its forums or
other pages on its website, which are hardly unbiased places to be looking
for such information. One would be wise to look elsewhere to determine the
truthfulness of the matter.
 
hummingbird said:
OK but "it" being which one of the Comodo products? The firewall?
Click to expand...

No, Trusttoolbar. The first company who mis-classified it was Lavasoft.
Trusttoolbar is a fairly advanced Identity assurance tool. As you know,
where phishing attacks happen and the most damage is done under 6 hours
making sure to have a real time identity assurance kind of makes sense.
So Trusttoolbar is a browser plugin that checks the legitimacy of each
site you go to in real time. In 2001/2002 (when Trusttoolbar was
launched) this realtime lookup scared lavasoft and they, without
analysing (as i believe lavasoft was one man band then and had no
resources) thought that was a bad thing. The idea of real time lookup
for identity assurance is now being accepted and we have been the
leader in that since 2001! So, as I said earlier, there are many cowboy
spyware companies, who piggy back on the analysis that other companies
do. Saves time and money to simply copy and paste someone else's
spyware database, along with that they also copy and paste the
mistakes! So anyone who reports trusttoolbar obviously have "not
analysed" trusttoolbar and simply copied other company's results;-) And
they get you to pay for that service too ;-) nice huh!

Trusttoolbar is a free product, we do NOT make money from it, in any
shape or form, its about providing identity assurance for free for
everyone.

Hope this clarifies.

Melih
 
Klaatu said:
Also, it seems a bit suspicious to me that Comodo, in its attempted defense
of its marketing practices, that it always links to posts on its forums or
other pages on its website, which are hardly unbiased places to be looking
for such information. One would be wise to look elsewhere to determine the
truthfulness of the matter.

--
"The PROPER way to handle HTML postings is to cancel the article, then
hire a hitman to kill the poster, his wife and kids, and **** his dog
and smash his computer into little bits. Anything more is just
extremism." -- Paul Tomblin
Click to expand...

Klaatu

Did you even take a look at the links i sent that was in our forums for
god sake!
if you did, you would see the third party letters and third party
editorials about trusttoolbar.

So what is your complaint about?

Melih
 
Craig said:
Thanks Dewey.

...from a manager at Internet Security Systems to Comodo's counsel:

"Upon further review we are unable to find evidence that the toolbar
meets any of our established criteria, and have therefore removed from
our database...We apologize for any inconvenience."

A pretty diffident apology considering the grief they cause...

-Craig
Click to expand...

Well at least they owned up to it and corrected it. Did they cause a
grief, you bet your bottom dollar they did, but at least they were
credible enough to own up and clear up.
btw: just seen this launched about our firewall that u might like to
read

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=2023631

thanks
Melih
 
Klaatu

Did you even take a look at the links i sent that was in our forums
for god sake!
if you did, you would see the third party letters and third party
editorials about trusttoolbar.

So what is your complaint about?
Click to expand...

First of all, you may want to learn to quote in usenet; you posted all
kinds of useless junk such as my signature and quotes from others having
nothing to do with what you're responding to.

Second, I did not lodge any complaint, did I? Just an observation about
your posting practices. You seem a bit defensive; why not let the quality
(or lack thereof) of your product speak for itself? Do you not want
others to do as I suggested and look to other sources of information
besides your obviously biased forums?

Third, I doubt I'll ever even try one of your programs based on the
attitude you've displayed in this newsgroup. I don't like pushy people,
and you're about as pushy as they come.

HAND
 
Dewey Edwards said:
He hasn't answered you. But just a throwaway addy
got me the answer -

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=D6B664E067CCBEBB
Click to expand...

Thank-you Dewey for providing this PDF file to me and others that may have
become interested in it because of Melih's reference to it.

Thank-you Melih for ignoring my request for an easy (no sign-up required)
method of viewing this PDF that you felt was crucial to the defence of your
product. :-(
 
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