Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: jjb2012 on March 27, 2011, 01:53:15 AM
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I am running AIS 6.1 with a web shield, Malwarebytes Pro (web shield on) and Online Armor Free (web shield on).
Is there any evidence that having three shields will conflict? Or slow down the browser? Should I only have one or two?
Thanks!
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I would definitely disable the OA one.
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I would definitely disable the OA one.
+1
Overkilling... and conflicts.
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It did catch scareware that AIS doesn't target. Too bad these supplemental anti-malware products aren't tested like the rest.
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It did catch scareware that AIS doesn't target. Too bad these supplemental anti-malware products aren't tested like the rest.
This will happen all the time with detection products: one miss, the other catch.
You need to find a balance. I think AIS is enough. AIS + MBAM is ok. AIS + MBAM + OA is overkilling.
You'll degrade that much your computer and browsing experience.
Common sense and cautions on the web can do it :)
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I run OA++ webshield and Avast! webshield together with no problems. I do exclude avast! in general from OA options/exclusions because of potential other issues. FYI, OA Webshield is not an AV, but in the old help file "Online Armor’s Web Shield will filter potentially dangerous web objects, malicious security tricks used by attackers/fraudsters, and Block malicious/fraudulent websites before your computer can load them." Future updates should make it more oriented toward DNS protection. I also use Prevx SafeOnline, which doesn't seem to cause any Avast! problems but does block certain OA website related features.
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MBAM's so called "Website Protection" won't even scan the webpage you visit. It is just an IP Blocker that intercepts the packet communications and filters the IP address for known Malicious activities.
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The only conflicts i could see was if you had both firewalls active, personally i dont know why you want online armor anyway since there is a perfectly good firewall in AIS ???
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If you want a little more browsing protection, try Norton DNS. Nothing to install or take up system resources, and no conflicts whatsoever.
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I agree with sded's post as I have a very similar security setup on 3 machines except sded is using OA ++ (without the AV) and I am using OA Premium [FW only] (along with the other security software mentioned in his post).
It is important to make exclusions and there are no problems. I have used and tested these software for several years now with no conflicts with multiple version changes and uninstalls/installs and upgrades.
Also as mentioned, OA webshield works entirely different from Avast.
You can if you want have OA and manually disable the firewall (FW), just like you can in AIS.
Both OA and AIS offer different products that you can customize, so I do not see this as overkill. With proper exclusions, this is layering of security. Should a conflict develop, perhaps due to a definition or version upgrade, then troubleshooting will need to be done.
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I have been running both Avast 6.0 and Online Armor 5.0 web shields without any problems.
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I have used and tested these software for several years now with no conflicts with multiple version changes and uninstalls/installs and upgrades.
I personally think that you are lucky that your box still boots. Wrt "OA Webshield is not an AV, but in the old help file "Online Armor’s Web Shield will filter potentially dangerous web objects, malicious security tricks used by attackers/fraudsters, and Block malicious/fraudulent websites before your computer can load them." <-- so does network shield in avast!
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"OA Webshield is not an AV, but in the old help file "Online Armor’s Web Shield will filter potentially dangerous web objects, malicious security tricks used by attackers/fraudsters, and Block malicious/fraudulent websites before your computer can load them."
You are looking at OA's help information and not Emsi's information on OA...different company and different product. A lot has changed through the years and versions.
Having tested OA on different OS's with Avast, and I'm not the only one here who has done this -- 3 of us in this thread already agree that OA and Avast can coexist without conflicts.
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You are looking at OA's help information and not Emsi's information on OA...different company and different product.
Not me - look more carefully who originally posted that. Regardless, my stance is still the same. The functionality overlaps and you are just asking for trouble.
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I think we need to get on-topic now and let the OP respond after our discussion so we do not confuse him/her.
Each person needs to decide for themselves what is best for their machine and set up.
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MBAM realtime protection is useless and heavy, just use it with "on-demand" scans.
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"It is just an IP Blocker that intercepts the packet communications and filters the IP address for known Malicious activities."
Here is the problem: I work on a large university campus (30,000 plus people). Our IT people look for patters of visiting IP addresses with "known Malicious Activities." MBAM blocked them all before (or instead) of AIS. When I turned off MBAM web shield, AIS missed some of the malicious IPs and my PC visited.
Result: IT shut down my ethernet so I'm without a computer for a week or more! Universities are the worst.
Here's what I do:
1. OFF campus, I don't run all three, I only run Avast web shield, use OA Free "Run Safer" (guest account by program). MBAM is scheduled to run weekly but doesn't run 24/7. It shuts itself off after updating and scanning.
2. I turned to an additional web shield (MBAM) because it seems to be best at getting scareware and my wife and kids fall for that all the time (sigh). We power users know to kill the process and scan but 99.9% of people don't.
How does that sound?
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MBAM realtime protection is useless and heavy, just use it with "on-demand" scans.
I quite think the opposite, the realtime protection of MBAM Pro is unsurpassed and probably the best at what it does, opening some system files can be a little slower sometimes by a split second but browsing speed is not affected at all and i would never go surfing without it.
jjb2012 why do you not use the firewall in AIS ? online armor is a great firewall but i dont see the point of having it since you also have a great firewall in AIS which you have paid for ??? by getting rid of OA you have solved your issue with too many programs and your then able too run MBAM in realtime which will protect you better imo ;)
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One thing you can do if you want to cut down on redundancy is to use the AIS Firewall, remove the OA firewall, and just use the OA HIPS and Run Safer. I haven't used this mode, but Avast! is a silent firewall without a HIPS capability (what you get as a substitute is in the shields) and OA is a very strong HIPS. The OA Run Safer feature allows you to selectively reduce the privileges of things like your browsers to a LUA, dramatically reducing the ability of malware to harm you without reducing everything to the nuisance of being a local user.
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Or use the license for avast! Pro.
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"One thing you can do if you want to cut down on redundancy is to use the AIS Firewall, remove the OA firewall, and just use the OA HIPS and Run Safer."
FYI: I _am_ using the Firewall of AIS but I love the "Run Safer" mode of OA Free -- it is the ONLY thing I use at home.
Again, my workplace is a paranoid place for good reason -- with gads of internatinoal students, computer engineering students, and ordinary students torrenting, the place is a vector for every nasty you can imagine! But everywhere else, I use
AIS
OA Free ("Run Safer" only) plus
MBAM (on weekly schedule)
I don't know why more people don't incorporate the "Run Safer" option from "Drop My Rights" (free from Microsoft). Yes, there are a few user-mode rootkits that can elevate privileges but that simple measure gets rid of a LOT of issues. And it is really light.
Thoughts?
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FYI: I _am_ using the Firewall of AIS but I love the "Run Safer" mode of OA Free -- it is the ONLY thing I use at home.
Thoughts?
For that, there is DropMyRights, using limited user account or something like Drop Rights feature in Sandboxie. Sorry but what you are doing makes little to no sense. Find a different product/way of dropping your privs, not a full-featured firewall.
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DropmyRights is NOT user friendly.
I'm not using a full featured firewall, I'm just using the Limited User part of it. The advantage, as many have noted, is that you can right-click open as "Normal" (with admin privileges) instead of switching users from a Guest to Admin account.
Personally, I don't like sandboxie or Avast sandbox -- too much fuss. A tiny bit of RAM on OA "Run Safer" (no firewall) is easier as an extra layer for things that get by.
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PS: Sandboxie didn't workn on 64-bit for the longest time and a new 64-bit version requires losing the protection of the Windows kernel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandboxie#64-bit_Windows
I'm not going THERE.
Basically, this thread has answered my questions. Thanks!
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A tiny bit of RAM on OA "Run Safer" (no firewall) is easier as an extra layer for things that get by.
There is no way to have "Run Safer" without getting all the firewall drivers loaded. Sorry, OA is not intended as a standalone to drop priviledge tokens.