Advice Request Why do you love or hate F-SECURE?

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Tiamati

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I follow AV reviews for some time and - for me - F-SECURE was a good product but never the best one. It had some flaws like some false positives and not the best scores. But i recognize: there are a lot of guys here that love it, and this group is growing lately. But i'm not sure if this is a bandwagon effect or if this ir real. So i would like to understand you. Why? Why do you thing F-SECURE is so good?
 

FireHammer

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I think F-Secure is top-notch AV-Software, I can get it free from my ISP, but I will stick with Bitdefender Total Security because it is in a whole other league IMHO.
I know F-Secure has produced outstanding results lately, but it does not tempt me. 😀
 

Minimalist

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Oct 2, 2020
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I don't love or hate their product. I tested it a week ago and it was OK. It was light, quick and simple to use.
Two things that I didn't like were: not been able to put DeepGuard in "ask mode" - similar to an option in Emsisoft's behaviour blocker; and it's interface (not that important).
As I understand they improved a lot so I guess that it's worth at least trying it out.
 

Thales

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It is light and very good in protection.
Good design, responsive, fast scanning, no annoying unnecessary popups.
F-secure Freedome VPN is very very good too. Stable, fast, has killswitch.
It has no in-built firewall and it is not a bad thing.
Improved a lot recently and it means they are working on it hard.

It is in my top 3 antivirus!
 

MacDefender

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Oct 13, 2019
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Things I like about the company:

  • Long history of excellence in the AV industry, strong track record of evolving over time (switching engines, inventing new techniques)
  • Great privacy track record -- they both talk the right talk and they also have fairly well written and clear policies about what they collect.
  • Mikko (Mikko Hyppönen - Wikipedia) is certainly an established name in this industry and I like seeing him as part of the product
  • The product doesn't try to shove services down your throat. These days so many AV software feel like they're constantly advertising services to you or trying to sneak auto-renewal onto you. F-Secure doesn't.
Things I like about the product:

  • I really like multi-engine approaches. I strongly believe you get better protection out of not relying on any single vendor or strategy. These days Avira signatures (especially with Avira Protection Cloud) are great and DeepGuard is still one of the top behavior blockers in the industry.
  • It's super lightweight
  • Strong recent track record -- from the Malware Hub testing to standardized AV testing performance, it's been doing really well since switching from BitDefender
  • Really good zero-day protection -- it's been one of the top products in my "DIY" testing where I write some POC malware based off techniques I see in real world samples.
Things I don't like about the product:
  • A lot of the protection comes from executing files, if you just do a static scan the detection rate is okay but not #1. I would never use F-Secure as a 2nd opinion scanner or totally static "emergency kit". (Execution passes through a few more layers of online reputation checking, not just DeepGuard behavior detection)
  • It's not good at disinfection -- it will block/delete specific files it detects. It isn't able to completely disinfect an already infected system.
  • Not having an "Internet Security" suite (outbound firewall blocking, IPS/IDS, always-on networking filter) is a minus in protection compared to full blown suites, but with that said, a lot of us have seen more bugs/performance hit coming from those kinds of suites.
  • Great pricing comes by maybe once or twice a year. It's not like Norton or BitDefender where it feels like you can constantly find excellent deals on the product.

Things that I think are overblown:
  • False Positives -- So far most of the false positives have been from esoteric/uncommon software. I think a lot of those are not situations the average user is likely to run into, and those less-confident detections (DeepGuard, suspicious / PUA, etc) directly have a button in their notification to allow the app.
 

Cortex

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I like it's lightness, & the simple uncluttered interface & good protection - I really prefer a built in firewall though probably because I'm getting on, & have no understanding of the ever increasing pointless blocked site etc data on the main page that can't be disabled.:(:(
 

Tiamati

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Remember the tweet by Snowden about the only AV company that you can trust in terms of not having ties to governments is F-Secure?
the other reason may be that they are so good in what they're doing the red teaming and all the stuff you've probably heard already. so that might cover their business marketing a bit and for home users i think most people beside geeks in MT care so much about AV-Test and AV-C results which F-Secure was so good at lately of course they just check Protection and performance not the false positive which i think that is what matters most.
Very clear and good points. Ty! The F-secure privacy politics are really good indeed.
As I understand they improved a lot so I guess that it's worth at least trying it out.
My BItdefender license just expired. I'll give a try
Really good zero-day protection -- it's been one of the top products in my "DIY" testing where I write some POC malware based off techniques I see in real world samples.
This results can be attributed to deep guard. I see a lot of people claiming DeepGuard is excellent but i don't really have a opinion about it.
It's not good at disinfection -- it will block/delete specific files it detects. It isn't able to completely disinfect an already infected system.
Good to know
False Positives -- So far most of the false positives have been from esoteric/uncommon software. I think a lot of those are not situations the average user is likely to run into, and those less-confident detections (DeepGuard, suspicious / PUA, etc) directly have a button in their notification to allow the app.

A lot of reviews shows that F-secure have too many false positives but never heard anyone complaining about it in real life experience...
 

Dave Russo

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Obviously the testimony of so many on this site ,makes this a recommended program, My preference (which may be a poor opinion) is to avoid programs that do not include there own firewall (Emsisoft, Trendmicro,and now F-secure)

BTW, do you know if F-secure have any extended trial or giveaways for now? I wanted to try it
They have a 30 day trial
Try for free | F-Secure (f-secure.com)
 

bribon77

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I don't hate F Secure or any other antivirus.
The only thing I didn't like was that when I installed it, it asked me to disable Shadow Defender and other security programs that I don't remember now.
I don't know if that has been solved in this new version.
But I think it's an antivirus, light and effective. Nothing to see in its principles that it was heavy.
 

Freud2004

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Jun 26, 2020
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so they got a really well protection they got some fancy hacker teams working for them. they got the one & only Mikko Hypponen also a great marketing for them in the cybersecurity space with his shows/talking and all the stuff. and their privacy policies that i've mentioned before of course.

btw, who hate F-Secure? i don't think anyone hate them. everyone love them. actually it might be the only company which everyone likes

I am a Kaspersky fanboy, and even, so I am seduce for F-Secure products. I like a lot Mikko Hypponen, it's a legend in the industry, and F-secure products are like Kaspersky, robust products, install and forget.

1606703682079.png
 

Back3

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Apr 14, 2019
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I can drive standard cars and tweak the gears. But, nowadays, I prefer automatic ones. And F-Secure feels like a good easy to drive car: it does what it is supposed to do automatically with a lot of adaptive tools that you don't need to know. And you feel safe and secure..steering it.
 

Tiamati

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MacDefender

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2 updates:

1) i found and extended trial to F-secure --> Extended Trial - F-secure 120 Days Trial | MalwareTips Community

2) F-secure had a very poor result on a recent AV-comparatives test

It's still good. I just don't agree that F-secure can be considered better than bitdefender or kaspersky...

Enhanced Real-World Test 2020 - Consumer - AV-Comparatives (av-comparatives.org)

View attachment 250691
This real-world ATP test is a pretty new form of test and the first of its kind to be done. We've generally seen good performance out of F-Secure's behavior blocker. It will be interesting to see how this changes in future tests but I don't think you can use a single test like this to discredit F-Secure as being lesser than the suites that scored better on this one test.
 

Tiamati

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This real-world ATP test is a pretty new form of test and the first of its kind to be done. We've generally seen good performance out of F-Secure's behavior blocker. It will be interesting to see how this changes in future tests but I don't think you can use a single test like this to discredit F-Secure as being lesser than the suites that scored better on this one test.
If i'm not wrong, this is the second or third test of this kind in av comparative, and Kaspersky and BItdefender had better results in the others too.

And I'm not considering F-secure as being lesser considering only that kind of review. In most tests i checked, F-secure is as good as those two, or slightly worst. It doesn't mean F-secure is bad. I'm just saying that F-secure can't be considered the best two av i know. Maybe, top three. But i understand who thinks differently.

edit: specially after Norton acquired Avira
 

MacDefender

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If i'm not wrong, this is the second or third test of this kind in av comparative, and Kaspersky and BItdefender had better results in the others too.

And I'm not considering F-secure as being lesser considering only that kind of review. In most tests i checked, F-secure is as good as those two, or slightly worst. It doesn't mean F-secure is bad. I'm just saying that F-secure can't be considered the best two av i know. Maybe, top three. But i understand who thinks differently.

edit: specially after Norton acquired Avira
If we don't count the enterprise and consumer ones in the same month as different, there's 2019 and 2020 in their archives. In 2019, F-Secure did pretty well, comparable to BitDefender:
1607558760069.png


I think it's really hard to pick top two or top three AV. They all have some strengths and weaknesses.

I respect your point too -- BitDefender and ESET and Kaspersky have established themselves for almost 10 years now of being top performing in these tests. F-Secure has had ups and downs. Some of us (myself included) have been excited that the last 2 or so years F-Secure has been more consistently ranked near the top in the standard non-ATP tests. Avira's acquisition is curious too but remember that F-Secure actually switched away from BitDefender due to both resource usage and poor signatures in the last few years. F-Secure has switched engines many times in the past and I don't doubt that if Avira gets bad they will switch again.
 
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Nightwalker

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May 26, 2014
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Just trying F-Secure in my main machine and again I am impressed by how good and fast the installation process is and by the fact that it will auto-update and make sure everything is fine (I am looking at you Norton).

I think it has the lowest system impact in my computer, everything is so smooth that I cant tell that it is running at all.

I really like F-Secure privacy/security commitment and the product itself is very well designed too, there is no bloat or complicated settings, it just works.
 

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