Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, I am the author of the Orbital Decay: the dark side of a popular file downloading tool article on ESET's WeLiveSecurity blog. Given the nature of the what was reported, I would caution against using any version of the software. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, The site listed in the email us-eset.com as being the sender of the license is not ESET or one of its resellers, but rather some group operating from Iran that sells pirated or counterfeit licenses for ESET's software. Their website is, in fact, blocked in ESET's software. I would suggest that you contact your credit card company or bank to report the scammer and issue a chargeback for a fraudulent purchase. ESET does not do business in Iran. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, I have asked ESET's web team to look into this. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, You will probably need to submit the files in question to ESET's threat lab for a more definitive analysis (see ESET Knowledgebase Article 141, "How do I submit a virus, website or potential false positive sample to ESET's lab?" for detailed instructions) but generally speaking, NS-prefixed temporary directories and files denote an application which has been packaged with NullSoft Scriptable Install System which, as the name implies, is a software program for making installers for other software. Nullsoft is the same company that made Winamp, a popular program for playing MP3s back in the late 1990s. The detection being reported by ESET's software is of a Potentially Unwanted Application, which is a class of applications that are not malicious software in and of themselves, but that perform activities you might or might not want being performed on your computer (hence the use of the word "potentially"). More information about them can be found in ESET Knowledgebase Article 2629, "What is a potentially unwanted application or potentially unwanted content?" or the in the Potentially Unwanted Applications White Paper published in ESET's WeLiveSecurity blog. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, I am looking at the ESET SysRescue Live download page at https://www.eset.com/int/support/sysrescue/ and it does say Windows 10 is supported. You might have better results using the downloadable .IMG file for creating a USB version than the .ISO file, which is normally intended for optical (CD or DVD) media. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, The telephone number for ESET's US office +1 (866) 343-3738. It is toll-free, and there is no charge for customer service activities like troubleshooting a license activation. Customer service, by the way, is handled on-site by ESET employees. I am not sure what message you saw or where it came from, but dialogs and messages from ESET's software do not contain phone numbers. I wonder if this might have been some kind of pop up or notification toast message from a web browser. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, Please contact the ESET Authorized Reseller or Distributor from which you purchased the license. They can provide you with the credentials used to register ESET NOD32 Antivirus for Linux Desktop. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, The ESET icon in the system tray notification area should be appearing automatically after the system starts. If it isn't, it could be that the program is getting disabled/prevented from being launched for some reason. I have seen this in the distant past with various system cleaning/tweaking/performance utilities, but do not recall seeing it recently. Please contact your legal ESET distributor or office and open a ticket with them, as a support engineer will need to examine your system further to determine what action is blocking the ESET user interface icon from populating in the system tray notification area. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, A list of removed programs can be found at https://support.eset.com/kb3527/#removable. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, ESET is open to new ideas and suggestions. Just don't expect all of them to be implemented, especially if they offer little added benefit to ESET's customers. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, I believe you'll find some of the requested functionality in various programs such as ESET SysInspector, ESET SysRescue Live CD, the ESET Rogue Applications Remover and various other malware removal tools. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, ESET could improve its results in tests done by some testers by adding junk files that are damaged, non-executable, contain only data, are otherwise non-threatening, but are detected by other anti-malware programs. Would you like ESET to add detection of junk because those other vendors have included those files? Just because a plethora of companies are doing something doesn't make it right, or even that it offers a benefit to their customers, for that matter. Adding features for marketing reasons is not a path I would like to ESET go down, and I suspect at least some of our customers feel the same way. There are lots of features, enhancements and improvements that ESET has yet to make to its software, and some of those will come out of message threads like this one. So, I encourage you to keep asking and making recommendations. But, also keep in mind that ESET is takes its customers' security seriously and wants to develop technologies that do that, and not spend its time and efforts trying to win marketing battles with competitors. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, Cookies are not malicious. While they may (or may not) represent privacy issues, they do not represent a threat to user security. Malicious advertisements are blocked all the time. If you want to block tracking, all ads, etc., I would suggest looking at what plugins are available for your web browser. HIPS updates occur as part of the regular updating of modules used by ESET Smart Security. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, False alarms on a web site are a big deal. They affect: Whomever owns the web site. Whomever visits the web site. The credibility of the company which generated the the false positive alarm to begin with. It has been my experience that people who visit web sites do not always know when a report of a problem is a false alarm or not. They might assume it is, and it turns out to be a legitimate report and they get infected. Or, they may contact the site operator or their anti-malware solutions provider, creating a support burden. Just because eight, eighty or eight hundred anti-malware companies do something does not mean that ESET should follow them down the "me, too" path. ESET chooses to implement technologies when they provide a tangible benefit to the computing public. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, I simply used Web of Trust as an example of someone who does a reputational toolbar as their core business. As far as I know, all the other companies you mentioned (Avast ... Webroot) make the majority of their money elsewhere. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had to jump through numerous hoops to get my own personal website reclassified (whitelisted), when my previous employer saw fit to advise everyone that my site was unsafe due to its lack of reputation. Now, I was able to get that cleared up in several days, but it took me several days and I had to to take advantage of some professional courtesies (e.g., the fact that I was a founder of that company as well as someone who currently worked at a competitor) in order to get them to update their database. And I was lucky, I had industry contacts to worth through. If I did not have those backchannels, who knows how many weeks or months it would have taken. This difficulty in (1) classifying sites properly to begin with; and (2) responding promptly to reclassification requests makes me believe that there is little additional value offered by site advisory services. Am I biased by my own experiences with a false positive alarm and subsequent difficulties getting that fixed? Yes, I certainly am. But, I also cannot help but wonder how difficult it would be for me get things cleared had I not been able to able to use my contacts. Lots of other companies offer varieties of different services, as a means of providing a layered approach, offering some form product differentiation, or even just performing feature parity for reviewers (i.e., "checkbox compliance"), but that does not necessarily mean that the option, feature or service passes the "works reasonably well" that I think is one of the reasons people choose ESET's software over others in a very crowded, competitive market. Maybe, one day, ESET will offer some kind of add-on, plugin or toolbar that provides a deterministic form of site advisory reputational data. But given what I've seen so far, I just don't feel this technology currently passes the "works reasonably well" criteria as a whole, industry-wide. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky