[pchelpers] Re: IE 8 on Windows XP desktop

Hi Gerald

> IE 8 was successfully put on my Windows XP desktop using an Ethernet
> connection. It is not as slow as the critics say.  I could not
> install iTunes and IE 8 on the wifi notebook.  It is on one home LAN.

Is that simply a statement or are you asking for help? If you want help, 
you'll have to provide some info on why installation didn't work or at 
least what happened when you tried.

> Since installation of IE 8 McAfee is catching PUP files.  McAfee
> automated instructions say it is a potentially dangerous file and I
> gave approval for removal of PUP.  Really now, McAfee cannot be that
> poor a program.
> 
> Any ideas?

IE is famous for not being a safe program and for letting malware right 
into Windows, so i'd stay away from it and use any other browser. You 
may have to use IE for a few websites that are badly programed and 
therefore only work with IE. It's usually enough to send the webmaster a 
friendly message that the site doesn't work in your browser to get it 
fixed in a few days.

Didn't McAfee tell you the name of what you call "it"? Was it something 
you recognised? It may have been a false positive.

Does McAfee tell you that PUP means "potentially unwanted program", or 
does it use that abbreviation unexplained to scare you and make itself 
look good? "Potentially unwanted" means there's a good chance that a 
program with a bad reputation like McAfee is claiming some legitimate 
program is perhaps dangerous because it doesn't recognize it or 
incorrectly judges its behavior to be suspicious. I wouldn't let McAfee 
do any surgery until i'd first got a second opinion. In fact, i'd do the 
same with any antimalware program if the identified PUP looks harmless 
or familiar.

Bad security programs are not only known for the above blatant errors 
called false positives but also for making a big fuss about harmless 
things like cookies and harmless remnants of removed malware in the 
registry so that they look efficient despite not finding some real 
malware, in other words producing false negatives. There's no official 
name for the scare tactics because they're simply fraud and it's hard to 
prove anybody is causing intentional false positives.

McAfee is famous for having an overblown advertising department that 
drove better competitors out of business by claiming McAfee was better 
because it not only found malware (usually viruses in those days) but 
also knew what malware it was, in other words knew the name of the 
malware used by others or invented by McAfee. In fact, McAfee was worse 
because it could and probably can identify only known malware.

The competitors were in fact better because they could and some can 
identify new and previously unknown malware on the basis of suspicious 
behavior, not just exact identification. This is called heuristics, and 
McAfee stopped the entire industry from developing it and instead made 
all antivirus programs get on the bandwagon of sending out info about 
known malware, which means users are always unprotected against the 
newest malware for many hours or days until they get updates of the 
malware ("virus") definitions (also called signatures). This encouraged 
the currently insane scramble between script kiddies and antimalware 
vendors, and there is good reason to believe that the vendors are happy 
about a situation where you need an update every few hours (and in fact 
before opening any email attachment) to be protected at least against 
the malware the vendor knew about a few hours ago.

A few years ago some antimalware programs again started developing 
heuristics, and McAfee is probably at least pretending it has it too 
despite ridiculing and killing this technology off. I remember seeing an 
objective test of antivirus programs last year in which McAfee did 
pretty well, so maybe it really does have heuristic detection too now, 
but i haven't heard that their support has gotten any better. Internet 
forums are full of people complaining about the longest waits and most 
incompetent help in the industry.

It's a good idea to stay away from all big companies because they care 
much less about their customers and products than smaller ones do, and i 
wouldn't support any company that's killed off innovation like McAfee 
did unless there were no alternative, and probably not even then.



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