Malwarebytes no longer a recommend product

[sub6fix]

I recently had a customer bring in a computer which was seemingly infected.  I progressed through my normal procedure which included running combofix and installing Malwarebytes Pro trial.  After removing all the identified infections, I attempted to activate the Malwarebytes real-time protection features only to find the "Enable Malicious Website Blocking" would not enable on this machine.  After multiple attempts by a Malwarebyes representative to correct the problem, nothing worked.  In the meantime, the 15 day trial has expired.  This was the representatives cue to jump ship and state that I was on my own.  Unfortunately for the Malwarebytes group, I will no longer be installing their trial product in the 100's of computers I see through my shop each month and offering them potential sales when I recommend to the users that they purchase the product at the end of the trial.  In hindsight, perhaps they should recognize the potential for sales loss this will amount to because of their actions by abandoning the customer midstream of troubleshooting.  Shame on you Malwarebytes.

[bob30880]

Which of your threads is true? Your previous ones stated that you installed the program on the advice of a friend. Now you claim you see 100's of computers a month and utilize the utilities described in this post when in fact in the malware removal thread you used those utilities by direction of the helper. Unfortunately the trial did expire and he could not help you with that. The people on this forum want nothing more than to assist anyone having issues with malware, computers and the like. To start a rant while being less than truthful doesn't help your case......just sayin.

[AdvancedSetup]

I actually wrote this information for a similar user with a different issue but it seems to apply here as well so I've gone ahead and repeated it here.

 

This sort of falls into the category at least a little bit that you are potentially inexperienced in the complexity and difficulty in any single tool being able to single-handedly both detect, prevent, and cure ALL ails of a computer. Even in a non infected computer the underlying operation of how a Windows computer runs is heavily controlled by what are called EVENTS. There can be a million events going on in a very short period of time even on a clean computer, let alone on one that is infected. There are estimates of over 5,000 different infections (most are very slight variations of the same basic infection) that come out every day. That slight variation is what helps it to elude detection. It is possible to prevent ALL infections but then the computer is so locked down, slow, and unusable that the "cure" is much worse than the infection.

For the sake of argument lets say an infection did get past security and is now on the computer. The Registry can easily have over a million keys, data, and value entries that the vast majority are not documented and often those that are documented are not done well. So now you have an infection that comes along and modifies keys, value, data in the Registry all of which are unknown because this infection is "new". Then you have the file system of the computer where there are hundreds of thousands of different files and folders and again many are not documented as to what they are or what they do but yet you want a single security product to know every single file on a computer (there are well over 1 billion computers connected to the Internet now days) when there are probably over a million different software applications and programs that can be downloaded and installed. Some are very proprietary and have no public documentation about them.

My point is that it is very complex and the potential damage and how to correct the damage (when we don't have your specific infection in a test lab to analyze) is Herculean at best. I've been doing Computer and Network Support now for over 20 years and no product is perfect bar none. I think that Malwarebytes has come a long way and is well ahead of some competitors but we too miss things and/or cannot fix all issues. There are about a dozen malware training schools out on the Internet that are well known and respected that provide free training for helpers to help others with cleaning computers and why you often see so many posts using different tools. Most of these helpers spend over a year or more studying computers in order to be able to assist users such as yourself or your customer to scan and clean up from an infection. One should not be running these tools without fully understanding when and how to use them.  Also in many cases you or the customer are also partly to blame for the infection in some cases. Many times the culprit is outdated or exploited code in software such as Flash or Java or missing Windows updates. Most users though simply don't know enough about computers and how to take care of them properly and prevent themselves from being infected.

 

So unfortunately you've had the experience of trying to fix a computer that was heavily damaged and the support representative was unable to locate and fix that damage.  I'm sorry but in some cases the damage done is not easily found or corrected and in some cases formatting the drive and reinstalling Windows is the best solution.

 

Thank you

 

[David H. Lipman]

I recently had a customer bring in a computer which was seemingly infected.  I progressed through my normal procedure which included running combofix and installing Malwarebytes Pro trial. 

 

If I am not mistaken, that's against the license agreement.

 

EULA

 

1.         Grant of License.

"solely for your personal or internal business purposes."

 

2.         Restrictions.

"You may not use or make the functionality of the Software available to third parties for any commercial purpose, such as for providing any computer repair, help desk or troubleshooting service, unless you have each end user purchase from Malwarebytes an individual full license for each Computer on which the Software is run."

 

[vince_]

Sub6fix Malwarebytes is the best in it's class and vince is always right unless Mrs vinces is around. I do know that call centers can be troublesome some times (I don't know about mbams as i've not used it) but you shouldn't let 1 miss understanding put you off or stop you from recommending such a great product as Malwarebytes, I mean it's detection rate is great and it's a one time payment, you can't knock that. 

Pluss so many helpfull staff on this forum who are always ready to help and give there time, in this day and age help for free and one time payments for a great product is like trying to pull one over on mrs vince it doesn't happen very often, mainly cause I'm too scared.

Malwarebytes and all its other products most of which are free it's awesome.

Mbam team you can run me over, shoot me, kick me in the hoo haas, insult me till the cows come home (and that wan't an innuendo aimed at mrs vince) I will still use mbam cause it is number 1, for me at least.

 

Vince_

[mountaintree16]

Malwarebytes does not abandon people.

I for one will always recommend Malwarebytes