Blog for hpHosts, and whatever else I feel like writing about ....

Wednesday 14 October 2009

Goodbye ClamWin, it was nice while it lasted

I'm sorry to say, I've just received the following e-mail from ClamWin, which means I'll now no longer recommend ANYONE use their software, and will be removing it from all computers I own and/or look after for others.

Hi again,

ClamWin team would like to thank all of you who voted in our poll and helped us form a broader opinion about the partnership with Ask.com.

Based on your feedback and our analysis of the Ask Toolbar we made a decision to go ahead and include the Ask Toolbar with ClamWin setup file. Incremental version updates will not be affected.

Please read an updated announcement here: http://www.clamwin.com/ask

Thank you all again and lets hope this move turns ClamWin into a better product in the near future.

ClamWin Team


Thank you ClamWin, for deciding you'd rather not be a security vendor we can trust.

Oh and yes folks, the toolbar is PRE-TICKED.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A product claiming to be open source security closed that claim with the addition of a commercially supported toolbar

Here's my problem, they force the toolbar upon installation by pre-checking the option, requiring the user to Opt-out. It should be the other way around and leave the option un-checked and require the user to Opt-in.

ClamWin, like so many others toolbar additives, expect the user to do a quick install: click "Next" to continue, and bang we're done. Very few now-a-days read the ToS, Privacy Policies, and quickly agree to any EULA's provided and with this, they now have FAT (For yet Another Toolbar).

Two thumbs down.

Unknown said...

I did an investigation. It can be read here:
http://www.helpmyos.com/bad-companies-investigations-f77/clamwin-is-now-distributing-ask-toolbar-t1327.htm#3175

I really do not like this. I did not see this coming.

Cd-MaN said...

Well, ClamWin was never a really good option. For one, their on-access scanner was somewhat limited (using user-mode hooking instead of kernel-mode if I remember right). The other part is that the signatures of ClamWin are skewed in the direction of detecting mass-mailing malware (because of its origin - as a server-side solution), which means that the coverage of "desktop" malware is quite low.

For free AV solutions I always recommend AVG, Avast or the new MS Security Essentials (Avira - even though quite good - has a little too much nag screens for my taste).

Unknown said...

You should also check out http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/


This site's sole purpose is to have a cheap platform for spyware bundlers to get their goodies on your system.

Latest greatest example is Anvir Task Manager.

http://www.threatexpert.com/report.aspx?md5=c7573658eb7ba865e43a1b389d752139

joel.herzog said...

Hold wait my MS Esseintals said I
had a backdoor. I looked to see where it came from:
C:\Users\Joel\AppData\Local\Temp\clamav-859d3b6517f4e508bc544cdb76ec67b0.00001664.clamtmp

This is its stats:
Backdoor:Win32/Ursap!rts 6/5/2011 9:53 AM Quarantined

DAMN IT CLAIMWIN!
You almost screwed my HP Pavilion P 6000 a.k.a. PIMPED Series