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New Ad-Aware Offers Behavioral Detection

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the and-chastizes-you-accordingly dept.

With the latest release of the popular anti-malware tool Ad-Aware, Lavasoft has added what is being referring to as "Genotype," a heuristic-based behavioral detection engine. In addition to a new (and what appears to be faster) method of detection and elimination, there are a few incremental updates like the simple/advanced toggle and a potentially always-on "gaming mode," which attempts to do real-time filtering while you are playing games, watching videos, or just browsing.

10 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Warning by Romancer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Warning, The page you are about to view contains P0rN and a small malware virus, would you like to continue?

    Options:
    Yes give me the Virus
    No Block the P0rN.

    --


    ) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
    ) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
    1. Re:Warning by gnick · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Followed by the pop-up in the lower-right corner that annoyed me to the point that I stripped Ad-Aware off of my system despite previously having shelled out for Ad-Aware Pro (one of the previous versions):

      Thank you for using Ad-Aware. To further protect your system, please click here to visit Lavasoft and upgrade to Ad-Aware Professional Edition.

      I like their product, but I hate being badgered.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    2. Re:Warning by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 5, Funny

      Do you not want to continue?

      [Enable] [Disable]

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  2. Slightly Offtopic: Not Genotype by drunken_boxer777 · · Score: 3, Informative

    As a trained biologist, I take exception to the failure to analogize properly. A genotype is the genetic description of an organism. This has nothing to do with a system that learns from experience.

    Those who create software: Please, if you are going to use a word from a different field to name or describe your program, try to pick a word that creates some sort of sensible analogy rather than choosing one that sounds cool and is unused. Otherwise, you risk sounding like an idiot.

    1. Re:Slightly Offtopic: Not Genotype by Interoperable · · Score: 5, Funny

      As a trained physicist I would like to extend that to include not just software developers but also Sci-Fi writers, politicians, the media, the general public and anyone who incorrectly uses the word "exponentially". In fact, people who use the word exponentially incorrectly are exponentially worse.

      --
      So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
    2. Re:Slightly Offtopic: Not Genotype by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Because the average guy is mean?

      Here all night!

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  3. People still use Ad-Aware? by Ka+D'Argo · · Score: 5, Informative

    I used to love it back in the day, removed all kinds of spywave, simple gui, updated easy enough, you ran it when you wanted, etc

    These days it keeps half a dozen processes running in the background with more to be opened if you do any kind of scan. I realize having real-time protection is a nice feature, having to go in and auto disable all these is a pain. If you're still getting malware on the go, so to speak, from websites, and aren't using a browser than's got security or at least security add-ons (Firefox + Noscript + ABP + Flashblock) then I could understand the need for it.

    Add in an anti virus software that does the same X number of processes in the background plus Ad-Aware thats way more bogged down software than ever. Ad-Aware used to be simple, clean and sleek, now it's just bloated shovelware (how quickly did they move from Version X to SE, to Version X.1?)

    Stick with Spybot, Malwarebytes, HijackThis and a decent backup like Nod32, Avast or AVG, imho.

    --
    Aw Frell this
    1. Re:People still use Ad-Aware? by gnick · · Score: 3, Funny

      Stick with Spybot, Malwarebytes, HijackThis and a decent backup like Nod32, Avast or AVG, imho.

      But do any of those have "gaming-mode"? That sounds kind of sexy. When you're out on the web and engaging in especially risky behavior that could earn you an infection, you're in "gaming-mode" - Yeah, right.

      "Mom! Don't you know how to knock??? I could have been in gaming mode!"

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    2. Re:People still use Ad-Aware? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      With all the background processes now, I keep programs like ad-aware uninstalled. Then when I want to perform a scan I install it, run the scan, and uninstall it again.

  4. In other news ... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The reason for the mysterious death of many computer users in the last time has been found. It turned out they all had an anti-malware program running which tried to detect and eliminate malware through analyzing its behaviour. Apparently the software detected dangerous behaviour from the computer users and therefore decided to eliminate them in order to protect the system.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.