Advice Request Advanced System Care By IObit detected by Malwarebytes as PUP. Is it really a PUP?

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jamescv7

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Mar 15, 2011
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Advanced System Care by itself is not a malicious however the detection brought by Malwarebytes may something to do on different matter.

PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) since some of the components may turn aggressive and cause system instability due on possible malicious behavior although not always.

The detection brought like Avira may turnout on possible fake installer however it can turn out to be False Positive.

Iobit by company is legitimate however the actions cause to be unethical.
 

Myriad

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May 22, 2016
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Because it is revenge from Malwarebytes Anti-Malware :D

I take your point .

I've been watching that ugly little spat for a few years now .

The more I look , the more it becomes fuzzy because there are actually two separate issues at work here ,IMO .

1] MBAM suspected for some time that IOBit were " borrowing " their malware sigs/ definitions.
They responded by making an imaginary malware ( which did nothing ) and bundled it into their update cycle.
And " Poof " , as if by magic , it turned up in the following bunch of IOBit updates ....
.... "What can't speak can't lie ".

2] There is also a significant cultural issue here -
In the West we grow up with a strong grasp of intellectual property , copyright , and a legal system which gives
a good deal of protection to those rights .
That notion simply does not exist in China , and it never has ( and I mean no disrespect to China or it's citizens ) .

On a broader note , IOBit do have a bad rep for sneaking in bundleware /crapware etc , but so do many others.

Just recently one of my OD scanners picked up a sneaky little rascal called " devidagent"
Tracking it down led to a folder created years ago by .... guess who ....
IObit

I guess the lesson learned is that no matter how good your uninstaller of choice , it is always worth searching
for remnants , with a few well chosen keywords .
Everything by voidtools is superb for this BTW , and mighty fast .

Anyway , I'm not surprised by the reported PUP detections .
 
Last edited:
D

Deleted member 178

2] There is also a significant cultural issue here -
In the West we grow up with a strong grasp of intellectual property , copyright , and a legal system which gives
a good deal of protection to those rights .
That notion simply does not exist in China , and it never has ( and I mean no disrespect to China or it's citizens ) .
Exact, i live in Asia and honestly here , nobody cares about the word "copyrights" and they even push the affront to almost replicate the name of the product like "Channel n°5" :p
 

shukla44

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Jan 14, 2016
601
About time. It started detecting Auslogics disk defrag a while back as PUP. Now this. Very aggressive indeed.
I use Auslogics disk defrag, it is not a PUP (for me), might be for someone. Same goes to ASC.
 
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spaceoctopus

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Jul 13, 2014
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I would not label these products, from Ashampoo, IObit and Auslogics as malware, but i think Malwarebytes is right to block them. As an example look at Ashampoo's products. They give you tons of giveaways. Ashampoo Burning Studio is a good example.

Why give you for ''Free'' 2017 version, while on their main website their is the version 18,which is their latest product?? Interestingly, Burning Studio 2017 is not officially represented on their main website. You really have to go into detailed searching to find it.

If you've installed the Burning Studio 2017 compared to the paid Version 18 (Both 2017 latest versions) , you may have noticed that Burning Studio 2017, despite it's ''Free'', it's full of advertisings and Pops Ups.Obviously it's some kind of manipulation by Ashampoo to force you to buy their paid products. I think it is for these reasons that Malwarebytes is agressive against Ashampoo products.

Ashampoo gives you full featured products, all year long in giveaways, because they want to share the love??seriously;) There is a catch somewhere. And i'm pretty sure that those versions of the their softwares seen in giveaways are outdated under the hood, all this hidden with a nice and intuitive GUI.;)
 

Winter Soldier

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I would not label these products, from Ashampoo, IObit and Auslogics as malware, but i think Malwarebytes is right to block them. As an example look at Ashampoo's products. They give you tons of giveaways. Ashampoo Burning Studio is a good example.

Why give you for ''Free'' 2017 version, while on their main website their is the version 18,which is their latest product?? Interestingly, Burning Studio 2017 is not officially represented on their main website. You really have to go into detailed searching to find it.

If you've installed the Burning Studio 2017 compared to the paid Version 18 (Both 2017 latest versions) , you may have noticed that Burning Studio 2017, despite it's ''Free'', it's full of advertisings and Pops Ups.Obviously it's some kind of manipulation by Ashampoo to force you to buy their paid products. I think it is for these reasons that Malwarebytes is agressive against Ashampoo products.

Ashampoo gives you full featured products, all year long in giveaways, because they want to share the love??seriously;) There is a catch somewhere. And i'm pretty sure that those versions of the their softwares seen in giveaways are outdated under the hood, all this hidden with a nice and intuitive GUI.;)
Couldn't agree more, I had experience with Iobit and Ashampoo products, some really valid no doubt, including their giveaways, but often with aggressive marketing policies.
 
D

Deleted member 178

I would not label these products, from Ashampoo, IObit and Auslogics as malware, but i think Malwarebytes is right to block them. As an example look at Ashampoo's products. They give you tons of giveaways. Ashampoo Burning Studio is a good example.
Are you serious? the company behavior has nothing to do with the efficiency of their soft. Doesn't mean a vendor has the right to decide for me what i can use. Auslogics as far i know is system tools (defragger, etc...)
MBAM should focus on fixing their poorly made software instead of blocking people the right to use other soft if they wish...:rolleyes:
MBAM behavior in this case is more close to a malware than a security soft. That reminds me some malware blocking access to AVs websites so the infected user can't download the cleaning tool...

Why give you for ''Free'' 2017 version, while on their main website their is the version 18,which is their latest product?? Interestingly, Burning Studio 2017 is not officially represented on their main website. You really have to go into detailed searching to find it.
If you've installed the Burning Studio 2017 compared to the paid Version 18 (Both 2017 latest versions) , you may have noticed that Burning Studio 2017, despite it's ''Free'', it's full of advertisings and Pops Ups.Obviously it's some kind of manipulation by Ashampoo to force you to buy their paid products. I think it is for these reasons that Malwarebytes is agressive against Ashampoo products.
Ashampoo gives you full featured products, all year long in giveaways, because they want to share the love??seriously;) There is a catch somewhere. And i'm pretty sure that those versions of the their softwares seen in giveaways are outdated under the hood, all this hidden with a nice and intuitive GUI.;)
Business is business, company has marketing tricks to push their sales; this isn't wrong. MBAM has no rights in this.
 

spaceoctopus

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Jul 13, 2014
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Are you serious? the company behavior has nothing to do with the efficiency of their soft. Doesn't mean a vendor has the right to decide for me what i can use. Auslogics as far i know is system tools (defragger, etc...)
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware should focus on fixing their poorly made software instead of blocking people the right to use other soft if they wish...:rolleyes:
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware behavior in this case is more close to a malware than a security soft. That reminds me some malware blocking access to AVs websites so the infected user can't download the cleaning tool...



Business is business, company has marketing tricks to push their sales; this isn't wrong. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware has no rights in this.

You are right and your point is perfectly valid. Of course the behavior of the company doesn't define the quality of the product, in terms of coding and features. But still a company's behavior is important. You cannot seperate it from the products they sell. Look at IOBIT, i personnally find their products to be quite effective. But some , and many articles tell you to be cautious about their products. Of course it's not malware.
Try to imagine a case where ESET decides to integrate IOBIT features into their products. Eset fans would start getting crazy.

In terms of marketing you are right too.But understand that difference. Emsisoft like many other products sends usage statistics to increase the efficiency and stability of the product. To that they add the possibility, for the user, to see what are the data that are sent to their servers. It's a kind of marketing too, but lets say it's more on the right side than the other. People love their product, buy it simply because of that.

Now Ashampoo. There is nothing bad, for a company to do some marketing. But not by bombarding you with Pop ups and advertisements, which sometimes freezes your Pc. We are more into some deception here. Take the case of Avast.They advertise their paid products in their free antivirus. There is no problem with that, it's not intrusive.You want to buy a more powerful version or not,it's cool,it's your choice.

And then, a company cannot all year long give you giveaways...with their best features in it. It goes in contradiction with paying for the same product.Why do this or that??..... It's simple logic. Of course, you decide wether you want to use the product or not. You may whitelist it, to avoid being blocked. But i think Malwarebytes is right in the sense that these products are a bit too much on the deceptive side. Making more cash at all cost. Doing whatever they can to squeeze more revenue.That's the point.

And to finish, you are again right, they need to improve their product.But i would say in terms of stability and performance. I find it to be doing a great job in terms of protection. Of course, better detections is always appreciated:)
 

codswollip

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Jan 29, 2017
1,201
As an example look at Ashampoo's products. They give you tons of giveaways. Ashampoo Burning Studio is a good example.

Why give you for ''Free'' 2017 version, while on their main website their is the version 18,which is their latest product?? Interestingly, Burning Studio 2017 is not officially represented on their main website. You really have to go into detailed searching to find it.
FWIW, Ashampoo giveaway products are labeled by year (2016, 2017...) and are generally reworks of the previous (not current) "official" version with liberal sprinklings of product offers thrown in. In the example above Burning Studio 2017 would be expected to be built upon v17 if v18 is their current offer.
 
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spaceoctopus

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FWIW, Ashampoo giveaway products are labeled by year (2016, 2017...) and are generally reworks of the previous (not current) "official" version with liberal sprinklings of product offers thrown in. In the example above Burning Studio 2017 would be expected to be built upon v17 if v18 is their current offer.
Thnx for these info! :)
 

Ink

Administrator
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Staff Member
Well-known
Jan 8, 2011
22,361
Not sure if you've seen this, but Malwarebytes aren't saying a word.. o_O

IObit has openly criticised Malwarebytes for flagging its Advanced SystemCare as a potentially unwanted programme (PUP) and removed it without warning.

This time it seems Malwarebytes was a little overzealous about its flagging.

As of March 31, IObit says Malwarebytes hasn’t provided any official criteria or communication channels for how to deal with misleading flags.​

Source: IObit & Malwarebytes spat continues as ‘legitimate’ program is blacklisted as PUP
 

drifter

New Member
Apr 22, 2017
1
I see your point, but you don't have to install a product to upload it's files to VT.
I see Winter was kind enough to do the leg work anyway.
i would not get to excited about iobits advanced system care 10, i have been using it for three yrs or more and its great software, never had a problem and malawarebytes i have had for over 4 yrs now and would not have a pc without it installed, if it pick up iobits system care as pup or whatever my simple messsage is don't worry about it, you can also set malawarebytes to ignore it to as i did, if you want a clean system both of these software's are great, i also use bitdefender ante virus 2017 my pc runs great and just to mention if your having trouble with slow restarts etc then you should most definitely install advanced system care 10 and no i do not work for these software companies just saying that the experience i have with them are great -no problems what so ever .
 

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