PC Matic: The Hype

[Chromatinfish 123]

So, last summer I was sitting in a luxury suite in Washington D.C., after a very tiring but fun trip to most of the memorials in the area. I decided to turn on the TV for a while, and there it goes... talking about this new product called PC Matic and how it's so good for your system.

If you want to watch some hysterical ads here they are:

The one that I actually saw was this one:



All right. This is great! Now I can have a wonderful running computer with excellent performance! Now I can have a huge boost in internet speed! Now I know that big name antivirus vendors don't protect you from modern.... wait what?

Let's see about that. Emsisoft has a behavior blocker for blocking zero-day threats. Norton uses SONAR, an intelligent module that combats zero-day threats by monitoring them. And so on and so forth. So that's a myth busted!

Now PC Matic claims it received VB 100 Certification:



Hmm... The video was published in 2014, which means that I should look for the 2014 results, hmm.

This doesn't look good at all! We discard the 2013 results, leaving one VB 100 Certification out of 4 tests. The rest of them it seems like they failed miserably, reaching hundreds, and thousands of false positives. If you refer to the video, the fake 92% accuracy was actually achieved.... but after having 840 false positives and not achieving VB 100 (and keep in mind that was a 2015 test, so PC matic either can detect the future or they can lie. Probably the latter). The only time it worked was an 86.9% detection rate. Which totally busts the promise that they are the best. Just look at this:

It was dated August 2013, which means that the makers of the PC Matic Video either forgot about this or lied (again!).

Look At This!:

Enough with smashing PC Matic scores. Now lets see this:

pcmatic.com | WOT Reputation Scorecard | WOT (Web of Trust)

Yeah, it just gets worse doesn't it!


I posted this to give out a warning to all members and guests of this MalwareTips Forum. Stay away from PC Matic, and don't get fooled by every TV commercial. Good Antiviruses don't have to use TV to advertise their products.

 

[jamescv7]

Good Antiviruses don't have to use TV to advertise their products.

Well technically its true but some legitimate AV vendors use advertising on TV to encourage users too, the difference only where awards that they achieved may contains fact but its temporary only as it denotes years.

At the end of the day, always make a research and differentiate the style of advertising.

 

[CMLew]

Posted yesterday by Rob Cheng himself at BleepingComputer.

PC Matic: What's the good (or bad) word? - Page 5 - General Security

This is Rob Cheng, CEO of PC Pitstop, makers of PC Matic. We are a small, hard working American software company. And we are NOT a scam.

We have been in business since November 1999, and we have never scammed anyone. We have a full 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee since we opened doors 16 years ago.

I have often pondered why a small yet vocal minority comes to the conclusion that we are a scam. We advertise on TV and I don't trust everything I see on TV. Just like you, whenever I see a new drug commercial, it makes me sad that someone might unknowingly listen to their doctor and lose their life.

On top of that, many of our now defunct competitors advertised heavily on TV. Finallyfast.com and MyCleanPC.com come to mind. So I understand that there is a tendency to paint us with the same brush. But we are not them.

In July 2014, our sales exploded because we beat all competitors in the Virus Bulletin RAP test. (Reactive Proactive) I put that in a TV ad, and it has been amazing. PC Matic has the industry's only white list that we developed internally and yes, right here in the USA. The black list methodoly of all of our competitors is deeply flawed and the only way to effectively stop ransomware, zero day attacks, and advanced persistent threats is to use a proactive approach like our white list.

Starting in June 2015, I also started mentioning that we havea product for enterprise and government agencies. It is a cloud based offering that scales to an infinite number of endpoints. Believe it or not, based on our TV ads, we are closing government agencies and enterprise. We even closed American Airlines late last year.

We also have a product that we market at trade shows called PC Matic MSP.

I am very excited about what the new year will bring. We continue to perfect our white list approach. I believe that we will consistently win every upcoming VB100 RAP result. The only question is by how much will we beat every other black list competitor.
And when we do, our sales will continue to climb, not because we are a scam, because we have a better product.

*Brings a chair* Popcorn time!

 

[CMLew]

PC Matic: What's the good (or bad) word? - Page 6 - Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware, and Privacy Software

Finally some clarifications regarding what is PC Matic about by the CEO.

One of the member there trying paid product.

What do you guys think?

 

[Exterminator]

I think the CEO can say whatever he wants about his product but I wouldn't touch it even if I was the last person on earth,starving and the PC Matic box was stuffed full of hot dogs.
You can add My Clean PC and that other scam Finally Fast to the scenario above also.
The commercials alone should be enough to turn you away but if not then well I guess your screwed up PC will.
These companies and their software are going to do nothing miraculous to fix your PC that you & Google can't do for you.

 

[NOLF92]

I just don't get how a scam product like My Clean PC can get so much TV time. I guess money speaks, but geez. Where's the CCleaner commercials? At least it does what it says it's going to do.

 

[CMLew]

I think the CEO can say whatever he wants about his product but I wouldn't touch it even if I was the last person on earth,starving and the PC Matic box was stuffed full of hot dogs.
You can add My Clean PC and that other scam Finally Fast to the scenario above also.
The commercials alone should be enough to turn you away but if not then well I guess your screwed up PC will.
These companies and their software are going to do nothing miraculous to fix your PC that you & Google can't do for you.

Good point @exterminator20
I'm actually waiting for the test results from one of the members there. Just curious.

Anyway another interesting point here (quoted):

Also I looked up the results of PC-Matic tests on VB100 since you got me curious. I compared it to other popular Antivirus software.

Virus Bulletin : VB100 Results - PC Matic vs Emsisoft vs ESET vs Kaspersky Lab (IS) vs Bitdefender vs avast!

840 false positives in your most recent test. This is way, WAY too much if you ask me. If I understand the VB100 graphics, all the other Antivirus didn't have a single FP. So how come PC-Matic had 840 of them? You cannot use that kind of product to protect a system properly if you ask me. This is way too dangerous. I've never seen a number of FP that high (over 100). Is there any explanations to that? For comparison, look up the tests on AV-Test.org. Kaspersky Internet Security 2015 in June 2015 was thrown 1,177,947 samples and had 0 FP, while the industry average during that period was 3. I really, really want to have an explanation on that one, because I just don't get it.

AV-TEST – The Independent IT-Security Institute

This sentence alone is enough said.

 

[Azure]

PC Matic: What's the good (or bad) word? - Page 6 - Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware, and Privacy Software

Finally some clarifications regarding what is PC Matic about by the CEO.

One of the member there trying paid product.

What do you guys think?

"The most important reason to purchase PC Matic is our white list which proactively blocks more malware than any other security product free or otherwise."
I wonder if he has heard of products like Voodooshield, EXE Radar Pro and SecureAPlus.

 

[CMLew]

"The most important reason to purchase PC Matic is our white list which proactively blocks more malware than any other security product free or otherwise."
I wonder if he has heard of products like Voodooshield, EXE Radar Pro and SecureAPlus.

From the looks of it, PC Matic is like a total security combo to me.
1) Antivirus = don't know which engine they're using.
2) Ccleaner equivalent
3) Anti-exe equivalent = due to whitelisting function.

 

[LabZero]

PC Matic: solid scam/crap, it is not enough advertising to build a good product.

Marketing techniques make miracles but where is the substance?

 

[CMLew]

Rob Cheng, the CEO, I think, is giving some users a paid license key to try back in BP forum. Anyone interested here to try and test it in MT?

 

[Kate_L]

PC Matic is Riskware In the past, it had "FAKEAV" behaviour.

 

[frogboy]

So if we all download PC Matic there will be no need for MT anymore we would all be protected then.

 

[Soulbound]

PC matic: don't get fooled by the advertisement. You better off with ClamAV for windows (no not being sarcastic)

 

[Dodi Glenn]

In efforts to avoid duplicate posts, I'll reference a post I wrote here PC Matic

In short, we arent riskware/crapware/adware. I'm more than happy to let malwaretips.com members test out the product to see for themselves. Start a conversation with me if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Dodi Glenn
VP, Cyber Security

 

[Rod McCarthy]

In efforts to avoid duplicate posts, I'll reference a post I wrote here PC Matic

In short, we arent riskware/crapware/adware. I'm more than happy to let malwaretips.com members test out the product to see for themselves. Start a conversation with me if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Dodi Glenn
VP, Cyber Security

This should be interesting, and make for a fun off day....I'll be watching this thread.