First, stop looking for best security product. The status “best” is temporal at most. It also depends on your own needs for support, speed, level of protection  and configuration of your PC.  The key is having something that works and knowing its limitations. That way one can cover the unprotected holes with different software.

I use ESET’s Smart security as first line of defense. Having good antivirus is important, and ESET is known to provide quite good protection over the years. But Smart Security provides firewall functions as well. We started using it in 2006 or 2005, I believe. I have not used Kaspersky for a while, but it was long time ago. It is still good, though. As there are lots of other good tools.

Free  antivirus choices work well too. I have installed AVAST, Microsoft Security Essentials on different PC’s with quite good results, though most of Security/Internet Suites are paid. MSE is great as it does not asks for email. You could use PCTools Antivirus as well.

However, there are antiviruses, that have holes in free versions. For example, AVG lacks rootkit protection, but has a strong community that promotes it. It will remain a popular choice.

So, you have chosen antivirus, but there is a need for second opinion tool that targets fresher parasites and does not interfere with antivirus. There are couple categories of such tools. For example, Threatfire uses behavioral detection, which helps against new parasites.

Another class of second-opinion tools are Anti-malware tools. This term is misleading, though. Anti-virus tools protect from broadest spectrum of parasites. Typical Anti-malware tools protect from parasites that are not viruses (that is, modify other executable content). Though the term Malware includes viruses as well.  The problem is that while viruses are geared towards spreading around, malware is geared towards you: either steal or extort your personal information, get paid for advertisements that are shown to you.

Which anti-malware to choose? Personally, I run Spyware Doctor, and it is the tool I install most often for this purpose. I install free version from pack.google.com on all PC’s except mine usually, even if it is older and limited one.   My friends and family like free software Another free choices would by Spybot S&D, Spyware Terminator, etc.

Commercial anti-malware choices would be the Spyware Doctor, Spyhunter (though highly expensive), Malwarebytes anti-malware, Superantispyware. Although last 2 are marketed as free tools, they are not. Both of them are commercial tools without any real time protection in free version.  The free versions are great for malware removal, though. I have free versions of both installed for testing purposes, but  I am not planning on buying full versions of these.

For me SuperAntiSpyware is somewhat misleading, as it’s  free version starts at system startup and is running all the time. But it does not actively protect the PC, which might be missed by many users. My free version of Malwarebytes started at system startup as well, however exited soon after. I am unsure if this unnecessary startup was removed in fresh version.

There are also toolbars, like SiteAdvisor or MyWot. They might provide some insight for safer browsing, but they will not protect from infected domains that fast. SiteAdvisor is more suitable for this, as it actually scans the websites for malware rather than being community opinion based.

To wrap it up, get Internet Security suite from any of major antivirus vendors. If you want to save some money, get free antivirus, and get firewall separately. Then you will need a second-opinion tools like threatfire and a good anti-malware with real time protection.  And some self-control not to click on every advertisement on the net

I have reviewed MyWOT positively in the past, and the points are still valid. However, it is time to talk about several downsides of it (and why I see no real use for it in the future).

First, it works as global unlike button in security market. Lots of people know about it in this area and use it to manipulate listings. Experts do not rate good sites in this area – there are too many, and no one cares if they are not their own. For example, one negative review of one Rogue cleaner in my blog resulted at negative review in MyWOT of my site by him (with several accounts). I know pretty much, that some of other ratings are voted by people advertising similar or same products:)

Second, the toolbar itself is made in the way that suggest auto-confirming votes. It blocks all sites with negative ratings, and many of the negative ratings are reconfirmed by users which do not see the site itself. I had a looong discussion with MyWOT platinum member to remove his comment (and rating), which was made WITHOUT checking website. The mailing forth and back lasted couple days, and I the last mail I got was that he removed the comment and will check the website once he has time.

Third, the sources of auto-rating. MyWOT uses 3 sources (maybe more) to confirm that site is valid : hphosts, delicious and digg. First one is negative, other ones have no bigger impact. All of them have no real basis. Everyone can submit to digg and delicious. Listing in hphosts is not purely black or white either: some of listings are irrelevant (“marketing strategies”) , some are out of control ( IPs history) , some are valid (distribution of malicious software). However, I haven’t seen users evaluating these properly. Everyone would just vote all bards the same.

4th, the site banner issue. I do not think it is ok, but whatever. If people would like to pay for displaying how crowd things the site is secure, then it is great for mywot. All banners based on real testing are much more useful.

5th. Malware, response time and such. MyWOT will not rate sites at once. Thus malware sites will not be rated as dangerous on first vote. Next, lots of malware is spread through sites with good reputation. Like facebook. Thus it will not make web any safer.

To summarize, to protect from parasites I would advice to use Site Advisor Toolbar and not Mywot. However, MyWOT could become much better if adding some changes. For example, incorporating Site Advisors ratings (including possitive and negative sides), checking spent time on the site on rating, checking overall distribution of ratings, etc.

Somewhat funny note is that my site was rated badly by Site Advisor as well, as I have provided a link to Malwarebytes executable or download page (can’t remember). Later on I get my WOT ratings because I am one of the few people that does not advertise Malwarebytes as “the best single protection” or smth.

My main concern was that community-driven opinions might be incorrect regards some of the product vendors due to popular opinion and not facts. This still remains true. WOT still votes out some of the commercial sites that have low reputation in non-commercial or competitor/managed communities in security field. Some of relatively good product vendors still suffer for their former actions and public opinion years after they corrected (more or less) their behavior. Well, nothing surprising.

The good thing is nice warning system I use both for avoiding bad sites and looking for them when I want to spot new threats. I like search result enhancement the most, and it helps me distinguishing sites I need when I browse security related search results.

What would improve MyWot? Here are my thoughts:

1. Allow user to browse site without warnings WHEN he is on it. Its quite annoying to close warning screen on each page. Or give an option "this session only" to disable the screen.

2. More consistency on what are good sites and bad sites, some guidelines as different people rate same level sites quite differently. To confirm this, I checked couple of poker rooms, rated quite high in industry (ratings from poker works room ratings  ) . The WOT ratings vary from very bad, to good although these rooms provide more or less same level of service, and I have not heard any specific complaints on the bad rated ones. Interesting enough, best ratings are for rooms that DO NOT complies with UIGEA, which prohibits accepting money from USA players, and worst ratings are for the rooms that prohibit American players from playing. Revenge? Well, More like distribution of WOT users.

The idea of the software is quite nice, a community based votes on sites and warning system. The single fear is that it might happen to become a web tool of revenge between competing security advisors, companies and tool developers. Everyone in this market has strong opinions what is legitimate and what is not, and this might be imposed on users. I have yet to know what stoppers are in WOT to protect from this behavior.

That’s why I have tried to install the add-on and ultimately failed. First time it installed, my firefox hanged in the background on restart and I had to kill it. It looked like that the WOT is installed, however it was not activated and no ratings were given.

Thus I have decided to reinstall it. The reinstall went smooth, and an agreement screen appeared, where I confirmed that I want to participate. Sadly, nothing changed, and I still can’t rate anything, or even see ratings.

The funny thing is that to access forum and (probably) the support, you need to be a member, and that means you have to have an active working copy of WOT. Thus I am not sure I’ll want to try fixing WOT installation again.  Even if they might be caused by VISTA or firewall settings (no warnings though, and I assume in the 1mb download there is the site list).

Also, WOT settings page works interestingly, it looks like the apply button is disabled, but that’s might get caused by installation problems.

More information can be found at http://www.mywot.com.

UPDATE

Couple of restarts later the extension started to work. And props for mywot.com support. Will post the results of testing the extension later.