longtimeuser

Okay, To be clear, I use strong passwords, unique mailboxes, don't include any personal data yada, yada, yada. But what you seem to be missing is that wheres I mostly sign onto boards using 10minutemail there may be many people who sign on using an active email account - whether primary or disposable. The hackers now have the opportunity to spam and/or test those email addresses against banks/retail/mail accounts etc. The issue is not about unique passwords, it's about unique email addresses. I respect your support for Eset but not your possibly over-confident attitude to security. I think certification would be a good idea, and also support the oft-mooted security internet redesign.

Just to let you know that after over ten years using Nod32 AV I did not renew this year and chose an alternative product. I won't repeat all my previous comments but Nod32 just isn't the cutting edge leader it used to be. Moreover, Eset's development process seems blinkered and possibly under-resourced. I know it's not directly related (so don't get worked up over this) but last night's forum breach just felt like icing on the cake. But I would like to thank Eset for Nod32's many years of total reliability.

Passing the buck to the 3rd party is all very well but Eset are in the security business and a security breach harms their credibility. Perhaps the lesson to learn is that Eset should not have used a third party. Or maybe the forum should have been left with Wilders where users perhaps would have been more careful in deciding what email address or profile information to provide. Users might assume their data is more secure on an official Eset forum. The answer "Who cares? Everything's been breached these days!" is no answer at all. If that's the attitude, why bother with any security? People in the security business are there to 'secure' data, not always be on the back foot, closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The current run of breaches should be a wake-up call to the entire security industry that it needs to raise its game.

Swex Thanks for the reply; it's clear you feel as positive and loyal towards Nod as I used to. It's common in security software forums for people to suggest "Don't use X, switch to Y" and then go off topic for pages of what amount to no more than consumer loyalty. I don't plan to do that here. What I would say is that as someone who works in software, the suggestion to 'stop using X' isn't helpful and is not a solution. We have a quality assurance team who's job it is to test our software to destruction in all worst case hardware AND software scenarios. They work in conjunction with R&D to ensure our products work on as many different machines as smoothly as possible. With PCs it's impossible to guarantee 100% smooth-running due to each invidivdual having an almost unique combination of OS, upgrades, drivers, services, registry etc. What you try to do is grade reported bugs so that you can fix them according to how critical they are AND how many users report them. In security software there aren't too many players (around 30 AV/firewall solutions in total), so this is a relatively small testing scenario but is made complex by the fact that they're all in competition, so are less likely to get under the hood regarding tech issues than they might with, say, Microsoft. I've been using security software since 1991 and in all that time I have not seen a satisfactory security suite. They all suffer from 1 or more of: 1. Being strong in one aspect (say, AV) and weak in another (say, firewall). 2. Unecessarily bloated in resource use. 3. Damaging the user's software environment in unusual circumstances (false positives particularly with respect to startup components). Single suites have too much control over everything and users are totally dependent on the software. I know this isn't a direct comparison but look at the recent MBAM disaster. Single suites also tend to fail more at clean uninstallation. I have had to help a number of folk with manual uninstallation of suites. 4. Different suites offer different useful tools but rarely all the ones you want. For me the better solution is always to get the best of both fields. This also allows me to shop for features. So I've always gone for standalones. Outpost for me has always been a solid firewall. Not only does it do the job but it's Web Content blocker is a simple and powerful tool for protection AND privacy. E.g. it blocks cookie returns and it stops java, active X etc. from running. You can configure it to allow whatever you want to run on a per-site basis. Nod32 by comparison lets everything run but decides whether or not it's safe to do so. You suggest Nod has been a problem only when I use Outpost. Re-read my message, I've been running them side by side for years without a hitch. Only with Nod 6 (startup freeze) and Nod7 (can't use internet) has there been a problem. I have a lifetime licence for Outpost and am unlikely to give that up short of Outpost taking a dive in quality. In addition to which, I think Outpost is a fine product. It's architecture has been mostly the same for the last few years. It's Nod that has changed and with each change there has been stability issues that Eset have not solved to my satisfaction. The suggestion, then, that I should uninstall Outpost and hand over all security of my PC to Eset's suite is simply unacceptable. When I first subscribed to nod it was very much the 'industry-insider's' choice but over the years -- either because of changing staff, OS changes or changes in malware design -- Eset have lost ground. I don't dismiss comparatives when both comparative sites and security bloggers are able to explain how Nod32 is not as robust as it used to be and is positively blind in areas of malware and malware removal. And I think this has been Nod32's downfall. It was the leader in 'pure' virus detection and removal. Since then the malware word has become a lot more tricky and it's in its behavioural module design that Nod32 is now causing the kind of problems I'm experiencing. I will definitely not be uninstalling outpost but, come renewal time, will see either that Eset and Agnitum have got this fixed or will be shopping for another AV -- though it's getting increasingly hard to ignore all the positive sounds people are making about Avast free despite its similarly weak performance in some AV comparisons. Thanks for taking the time to post.

Add me to the list for this one. When upgrading NOD I always have to: (1) uninstall outpost (2) uninstall Nod (3) install new Nod (4) reinstall outpost. Any kind of upgrade on top has always resulted in disaster. Usually, to get Outpost Web Control to work, I leave Nod32 compatibilty ticked during Outpost install. Web Control is still greyed out in Outpost but I make 3 changes to machine.ini to activate it and everything works fine. This method has worked well for years across different versions. I'd delayed upgrading NOD until a couple of days ago: 7.0.302.26 and so also upgraded outpost to 8.1.2. I used the above order. I decided to upgrade to Nod 7 because with Nod 6 I was experiencing freezes during startup which I'm 99% sure (based on timing of splashscreen etc.) is caused by Nod. I then had a weekend of nothing but delayed or incomplete web page loading - painfully slow. So (after testing broadband speed, malware checks etc.) I seached for problems and found this thread. The symptoms described on the link above to the beta version of Nod32 are identical to what I'm experiencing. Even when I disable the web control using Outpost's settings interface, the problems continue. I have not tested any of the Nod32 configurations listed here. Yesterday, I uninstalled Nod7, went back to 6 and everything works fine (though I still have the startup freeze lottery). After using Nod32 for over 10 years, I get the feeling I will not be renewing my licence in a few months' time. Nod has not peformed as well in comparatives as it used to, and recent advances are causing the kind of stability problems that never used to happen. I don't know if the core Nod tech people left the company some time back but Nod no longer performs like the smooth and effective King of AV products it used to be. It's particularly disappointing that the problem was reported during beta and not resolved by Eset through more thorough compatibility testing. Similarly when I contacted Nod32 customer support about v6 startup crashes they denied it was Nod, then asked for various files from me, and then I never heard from them again. And the freeze problem was never properly answered on this forum. There seems to be a lack of urgency in resolving any compatibility issues with Outpost.