Advice Request Malwarebytes Premium -- Has it 'Jumped the Shark?'

[Gangelo]

Please stop mentioning non-legitimate $2.50 lifetime licenses on this forum, Malwarebytes does not sell $2.50 lifetime licenses and those that you find on eBay are infringement\stolen licenses.

Can you prove that? Source?
The licences could be leftovers from before. After all, Malwarebytes is very aggressive nowadays towards illegal licences, they all get deactivated.
The fact that the official price is much higher does not say anything. You can get cheap licences for Kaspersky, Norton, Trend Micro, Bullguard, etc. for which someone has multi-seat licences and sells them individually. Those are anything but illegal.

 

[LDogg]

Can you prove that? Source?
The licences could be leftovers from before. After all, Malwarebytes is very aggressive nowadays towards illegal licences, they all get deactivated.
The fact that the official price is much higher does not say anything. You can get cheap licences for Kaspersky, Norton, Trend Micro, Bullguard, etc. for which someone has multi-seat licences and sells them individually. Those are anything but illegal.

If MBAM was selling lifetime license for $2.50, I'd of been one of the first to have it. As stated by @Pixy Stix can you please show source(s) to backup your statement regarding Malwarebytes shipping out $2.50 lifetime licenses. I believe what you typed about these licenses is an utter falsehood.

Back on topic regarding MBAM, I think it's primarily a standalone product that should be twinned with something like VoodooShield or OSA. Not with an AV. That is just personal opinion and anyone is free to disagree with me regarding this.

~LDogg

 

[Gangelo]

If MBAM was selling lifetime license for $2.50, I'd of been one of the first to have it. As stated by @Pixy Stix can you please show source(s) to backup your statement regarding Malwarebytes shipping out $2.50 lifetime licenses. I believe what you typed about these licenses is an utter falsehood.

Back on topic regarding MBAM, I think it's primarily a standalone product that should be twinned with something like VoodooShield or OSA. Not with an AV. That is just personal opinion and anyone is free to disagree with me regarding this.

~LDogg

Utter falsehood? All licences have been bought through Redditbay and can be found quite easily. I don't remember the seller I got them from.
A quick search example below:

 

[LDogg]

Utter falsehood? All licences have been bought through Redditbay and can be found quite easily. I don't remember the seller I got them from.
A quick search example below:

Are they reliable licenses though?

~LDogg

 

[Gangelo]

Are they reliable licenses though?

~LDogg

Reliable as activating with no errors, yes they are. I do not know their source. As I said before, they could be leftover lifetime licences from back in the day.

Don't get me wrong, If I determine that they are stolen or hacked I will have no issue deactivating them.

 

[Durew]

(...)
So basically the implied argument is that MBAM does not provide full coverage because it is a companion AV (it is meant to catch those samples that are missed by the primary AV vendors). In other words, MBAM is a limited protection product by design. Therefore, it's "performance" is all dependent upon how well Malwarebytes is tracking and covering those areas missed by the main AV vendors and how well-designed the other protections are. Fair enough...

Glad to know we agree.

despite the fact that Malwarebytes is promoting it as an AV-replacement.

I still dislike that claim of MB.

We will give MBAM the "companion AV" exception because the argument is that since it isn't given this exception, any testing is unfair and incorrect.

I'd like to add that this is soley about MBAM along side a main AV. Even the experts on the MBAM are inclined to state that MBAM should be used alongside at least windows defender.

So I collect 1,000 filtered samples (.exe, scripts, webpages, etc). And then go about fairly and rigourously testing MBAM. In the end, it does only a so-so job (which I already know will be the case). And then what ? According to the rules of "companion AV" testing you guys have laid-out, it is as fair and accurate test as anyone is going to find.

This would indeed be the first test aimed at companion AV's that I heard of. Just to be sure, was this test hypothetical or did you actually manage perform it in such short notice?

However, I also know for a fact that there will be those that will complain that the testing was not done fairly, and that accounts for the end result.
(...)
My experience is that no matter how fair, well-conceived, properly executed and reported any testing might be, there are those that will cry foul.

You can count on that. Just FWI, malwarebytes did post a description of what they see a fair test, it is mostly aimed at the anti-exploit component. (Malwarebytes 3 - Frequently Asked Questions).

(...)
If you think Malwarebytes is OK, then that's great. However, a lot of people on the forums don't think so. At one time Malwarebytes products were fairly well respected, but over the prior 5 years the reputation as a quality product has justly declined.

So it seems. I hope the problem is poor testing but I'm getting more and more sceptical.

 

[Nightwalker]

Malwarebytes Premium 3 isnt the best solution, but it is far from being useless; it just need to have less system impact and be cheaper to be a good complementary product.

Considering that the predominant malware landscape consist of PUPs, cryptojacking, ransomware and weaponized documents (superb anti exploit) it is easy to see why the company markets the product as an antivirus replacement.

Malwarebytes really excel against those threats and its web protection is so good that the user wont find those threats at all.

Just give the extension a try and you will know what I am talking about.

Would I buy/use it in the place of ESET/Emsisoft/Kaspersky? Hell no, but it doesnt mean that it sucks.

 

[Wraith]

It is no longer the Malwarebytes when it was first released. I so miss mbam 1.75. I loved it and it saved my back many times back in the day. Even though I have a lifetime license I don't use the premium version. I use the free version for on demand scans mainly because mbam scans the registry which ESET doesn't scan.

 

[Gangelo]

Let me clarify a few things.
I am not a Malwarebytes fanboy. I am a huge advocate of Windows built in solutions such as Group Policy edits, SRP and Defender. But the idea of complementing Defender with 'modules' for things it does not have such as web protection and behavioural antiransomware sound good to me.
Now, personally speaking, if MBAM catches even one thing that might get passed Defender, it did it's job. And it feels good to have a small additional layer of protection in case a malware disables Defender. That is why I still use it.

 

[Gangelo]

Give me the source that you purchased the licenses from for $2.50. That is about 30 SEK. I will buy 20 licenses and forward them to Malwarebytes for validation. If Malwarebytes says they are all legit, I will turn them over to MT Staff and they can give them all away. If they turn out to be ripped licenses then I'll give Malwarebytes the pertinent infos so they can sort it out.

But don't think this is some type of Scot free deal. If any of the licenses turn out to be fraudulent your infos goes to Malwarebytes contacts. And if you weren't already aware of it, Malwarebytes staff is active here at MT.

Fair enough ?

More than fair.
Check my previous post with the source (redditbay). The seller for my licences is a different one though (Pr3stige).
As for my details, I wouldn't care less if Malwarebytes staff gets it.

 

[ForgottenSeer 69673]

Everyone likes WFC, right? MB owns that now. Also MB is the only company that still stands behind it's userbase's lifetime Lics, unlike Avast as I recently found.

 

[SumTingWong]

Everyone likes WFC, right? MB owns that now. Also MB is the only company that still stands behind it's userbase's lifetime Lics, unlike Avast as I recently found.

Not me because I don't use WFC at all. MBAM is good for detecting PUP and Adware, but everything else is hit or miss.

 

[Local Host]

Everyone likes WFC, right? MB owns that now. Also MB is the only company that still stands behind it's userbase's lifetime Lics, unlike Avast as I recently found.

And it shows, it now consumes way more resources than before.

I rather stick with Windows Firewall default UI, than have a resource hog to manage my Firewall.

 

[ForgottenSeer 69673]

And it shows, it now consumes way more resources than before.

I rather stick with Windows Firewall default UI, than have a resource hog to manage my Firewall.

one screen shot of edge and one of MB.

 

[oldschool]

I rather stick with Windows Firewall default UI, than have a resource hog to manage my Firewall.

3rd party GUIs for WF? This is going off-topic, but all of them - SimpleWall, WFC, etc. most are for users who love pop-ups. And they all are prone to Windows feature update issues, that may or may not addressed in a timely fashion.

 

[ForgottenSeer 69673]

3rd party GUIs for WF? This is going off-topic, but all of them - SimpleWall, WFC, etc. most are for users who love pop-ups. And they all are prone to Windows feature update issues, that may or may not addressed in a timely fashion.

not sure if you are talking to me but my post was about MB now owning WFC, which makes it a suit eventually.

 

[oldschool]

not sure if you are talking to me but my post was about MB now owning WFC, which makes it a suit eventually.

No, I was replying to @Local Host and just making a general statement. I don't have current experience with WFC but I don't see why MB owning them necessarily would make any big difference. It sounds like they intend to keep it free, and only @alexandrud does development on it. I'd say that's a plus.

 

[Local Host]

one screen shot of edge and one of MB.View attachment 210757View attachment 210757View attachment 210758

Why you comparing a Security Product to a Browser is beyond me, not to mention Windows Task Manager is barely detailed.

But if you wanna compare metrics through the Windows Task Manager, at least make proper comparisons. As you can see Malwarebytes consumes +93% more resources than Kaspersky AV (on the service alone, if we compare the UI resource usage Malwarebytes will crumble even further).

No, I was replying to @Local Host and just making a general statement. I don't have current experience with WFC but I don't see why MB owning them necessarily would make any big difference. It sounds like they intend to keep it free, and only @alexandrud does development on it. I'd say that's a plus.

I was talking about the fact they already changed the WFC UI to match their other products, and is already consuming more resources compared to the previous versions.

 

[oldschool]

Why you comparing a Security Product to a Browser is beyond me, not to mention Windows Task Manager is barely detailed.

But if you wanna compare metrics through the Windows Task Manager, at least make proper comparisons. As you can see Malwarebytes consumes +93% more resources than Kaspersky AV (on the service alone, if we compare the UI resource usage Malwarebytes will crumble even further).

I was talking about the fact they already changed the WFC UI to match their other products, and is already consuming more resources compared to the previous versions.

So it is getting bloated, relatively. I do know the UI also connects to MBAM if you have it installed, and this type of (useless?) functionality only adds to the bloat. I'm with you on this. My machine runs all the better with less 3rd party apps.

 

[Gangelo]

Some users keep complaining about resources.
In my systems, MBAM with all modules on consumes 145 MB of memory and hardly any IO activity on my disks.
It is ridiculous in 2019 to talk about such small resource consumption.
A small SSD and 8 Gb of RAM are now dirt cheap, maybe some people should upgrade their systems?