Monday, July 05, 2010

no i will not disable my anti-malware...

... or any part thereof  just because you think it's causing your software to crash on my system.

and who is giving users the 'lower your guard for a better experience' advice today? why google of course.

Other software has incompatibilities with Google Chrome, but you may be able to solve your crash issues without disabling the entire software.

If you have Internet Download Manager (IDM), disable the 'Advanced browser integration' option within IDM (go to Options > General).

If you have NVIDIA Desktop Explorer, try removing the nvshell.dll library using the steps on this site: http://www.spywareremove.com/security/how-to-remove-dll-files/

If you have FolderSize, try the fix on this site: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2900504&group_id=127365&atid=708425

If you have NOD32 version 2.7, upgrade to the latest version of NOD32 or disable internet monitoring in NOD32 2.7.
now, to be fair they did  also suggest upgrading, and that is a good option - in fact it should have been the only option they offered when it came potential anti-malware software conflicts for a couple of reasons.
  1. turning things off is a lot less hassle than upgrading so if people think it'll work they're more likely to take that option
  2. the current landscape is such that anti-malware software is most people's only defense against malware
ideally i'd like to see people put up additional defenses, but at the very least we should try to avoid telling them to lower the only defense they've got.

and yes, i did notice that they only suggested disabling the internet monitoring; well guess where most new malware is coming from these day - yeah, that's right, the internet. some parts of an anti-malware product may be a little less useful than others but internet monitoring, when the internet is a major malware vector, is really kind of important.

i know google has a few smart folks when it comes to security, but they were also rather famously compromised using ancient microsoft software. one wonders if they disabled anti-malware protection in that case too. i'd like to see some of the security know-how that a few of them have distributed more broadly across the entire company so that well-meaning but misguided engineers don't give out dangerous advice in the name of improving the user experience with the browser.

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