{"id":6020,"date":"2013-08-02T14:55:29","date_gmt":"2013-08-02T18:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=6020"},"modified":"2013-08-02T14:55:29","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T18:55:29","slug":"whats-up-with-microsoft-security-essentials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/whats-up-with-microsoft-security-essentials\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s up with Microsoft Security Essentials?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve been recommending and using Microsoft Security Essentials for a long time. And we’re still recommending it, but we’re getting a bit concerned. The last data available from AV Comparatives (a trusted, independent shows Microsoft Security Essentials with a detection rate of 90.4% in the real-world antivirus test. This is not very good when compared to others. And the numbers keep falling. At what point should we pull our recommendation? Is Microsoft still serious about MSE or have they started letting us all down — AGAIN?<\/span><\/p>\n

We want you to know that we are keeping an eye on this for you. The last time Microsoft won a 3-star award (the highest award AV comparatives gives) was July 2012. It’s now August 2013, so that’s more than a year ago. It has won no awards in 2013.<\/p>\n

No antivirus consistently scores 100% but many come close. And we’re concerned that MSE is going to soon slip below 90% and that is just plain not acceptable. With the number of good, free antivirus programs declining, and the best of the other free ones turning into mini-Nortons, we’re very concerned about the disturbing now year-long continuous decline in MSE’s effectiveness.<\/p>\n

We just checked AV Comparatives July 2013 one, two and three star awards, and MSE wasn’t even able to garner one star.<\/p>\n

For your information, here are the one, two and three star award antivirus award winners from AV Comparatives for July 2013 (the most recent awards):<\/p>\n

\"Cloudeight<\/p>\n

Note: The Avast and AVG programs tested were not the free versions but the commercial (paid) versions.<\/p>\n

So where’s MSE? And, why is Norton consistently missing? Because they don’t want to participate, that’s why. And why don’t they want to participate? We don’t know. Do you want to guess?<\/p>\n

We are following MSE very closely, and if it comes time to pull our recommendation, we will do so. Your safety is our concern and we’ll be watching this situation for you. If MSE doesn’t show an improvement in August 2013 we’ll drop our recommendation and advise you to switch antivirus programs. In the meantime we’ll be testing free anti-virus programs for you to see which offers you the best protection with the least amount of interference.<\/p>\n

Again, Emsisoft was a 3-star winner — so it’s not only the best anti-malware available, it’s also one of the best antivirus programs available. We’re committed to keeping safe and separating facts from all the detritus out there. You can see with your own eyes, which antivirus programs make the cut and which don’t.<\/p>\n

For now, those of you using MSE who want to keep using it, should do so, keeping in mind when the first of September rolls around, you might have to make a change.<\/p>\n

(This article applies to Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 with MSE installed.)<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve been recommending and using Microsoft Security Essentials for a long time. And we’re still recommending it, but we’re getting a bit concerned. The last data available from AV Comparatives (a trusted, independent shows Microsoft Security Essentials with a detection rate of 90.4% in the real-world antivirus test. This is not very good when compared to others. And\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6020"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6022,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions\/6022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}