Hello all,
I saw the mention of me in this post, so I thought I would chime in. As pointed out, I was one of the originals from the CounterSpy/VIPRE team. Currently, I'm the Vice President of Cyber Security with PC Pitstop. Also, I sit on the board of AMTSO, an antimalware testing standards organization. I've been in the cyber security industry for over 13 years.
I can honestly say that before joining the company, I looked at not only the product, but also the company itself. I can say with certainty the product isnt malware/adware/ransomware/crapware etc. I would never work for a company that produces software such as that, or behaves in a negative manner.
I know some people have critiqued our commercials, for being a bit edgy, and to be honest, we've toned them down a bit. Yes, we offer PC optimization, however, those features are legacy features, and date back to the Windows XP days, when it was more useful for the operating system. We still offer patch management/vulnerability updates and driver updates, and I think those are both beneficial, regardless of the operating system.
Where I find PC Matic working the best, is with the Super Shield feature in the product, otherwise known as the whitelist. Coming from the traditional blacklist type of antivirus product, it was always a cat and mouse game. We created signatures and heuristics, but the hackers would change a few lines of code, and the malware would go undetected.
The way PC Matic works is by only allowing trusted applications to run. Instead of someone manually parsing the system, our research team looks for good files, and adds them to our global whitelist. Yes, there are false positives and heck, even blacklist AV products have them. We address the false positives typically in 4 hours or less. If the file is unknown to us, we get sent some metadata which will allow the researchers to determine whether or not the files are good or bad. My personal view is I'd rather not be able to run a one off application, than to get infected with Locky or some other ransomware, which encrypts all of my files. In the event the FP needs to be executed immediately, you can always locally whitelist the product, so it won't be blocked from running.
If anyone wants to contact me, please feel free to start a conversation. I'm more than happy to answer any question and if anyone wants to test drive the product, I can create an activation key for them.
Best wishes,
Dodi Glenn
VP, Cyber Security
