MBAM web protection (extension or paid software) is a keeper; I am fascinated by its protection, it makes the web browsing much more comfortable and safer.
Nightwalker -- I'm sure you know about what I'm going to paste below --- as you have a broad awareness of the security software landscape. It's pretty evident that you spend time looking around and assessing different capabilities.
For others though, there are apparently a few different and/or additional things that the '
MBAM Browser Extension Beta' may protect against in addition to the capabilities of MBAM Pro. They recommend that we run both.
From mod exile360 at the MBAM Forums:
The browser extension has several behavior-based blocking components and additional heuristics which are not built into the Malwarebytes 3 Web Protection component (they can't be because they must be able to access the pages/content from "inside" the browser to see it/detect it and the Web Protection component operates from the network stack at the same level as the Windows Firewall) so there will definitely be cases where sites are blocked by the browser extension that are not currently in the Malwarebytes 3 Web Protection database(s).
So if you identify a site being blocked by the browser extension(s) that is not blocked by Web Protection alone (and of course assuming it is not a false positive) then yes, you may report it to the Research team so that they may look into adding it to the MB3 Web Protection block list/black list.
This is one of the big advantages of this new technology. It provides additional blocking capabilities and works hand in hand with the Web Protection component in Malwarebytes 3, enhancing what it can do (though it's not required to have both, though more malicious content is blocked if you do have both obviously).
...the extensions rely more on signature-less behavior-based detection, so they are able to block new/unknown malicious sites that Web Protection won't until the Research team becomes aware of them. It also blocks certain categories, such as some ads and tracking servers that aren't targeted by the Web Protection component in MB3. The extensions are designed to work in tandem with the Web Protection in MB3, however, they can also function separately without it. When used with it, they can speed up browsing when web blocks from MB3 occur because they act sort of like a local server, speeding up the lookup (you'll often notice a delay in your browser when a site is blocked by MB3; this delay practically vanishes when using the browser plugins if the block was triggered by your browser and the block page tends to load much more quickly). So the browser extensions are standalone tools that serve a somewhat similar purpose but accomplish it in a very different way which makes them more proactive, at least against specific types of sites such as tech support scam sites, clickbait sites and certain other categories of threats, plus their targeting of additional items not normally blocked by M, malicious C&C servers or just sites that are hosting malware binaries or exploits but are structurally/behaviorally no different from any normal/safe site). B3. At the same time, other malicious sites that can't really be blocked behaviorally because they're not obviously different in any meaningful way (other than hosting malware, obviously) from normal websites need to be included in a database/block list like the tech in MB3's Web Protection component (for example, malicious C&C servers or just sites that are hosting malware binaries or exploits but are structurally/behaviorally no different from any normal/safe site).
And.... Thanks for the explanations of the other apps.
I've never taken the time to look at Stylus and Enhancer... but with a little more reading, I'm going to try one or both.
-Humongo Burrito
