http://www.pcmag.com/review/353931/c...vent-premium-8

Based on this article I have uninstalled Cryptoprevent and installed MBARW.
Malwarebytes products have always been top-notch, so I feel perfectly good about it.

Interesting. Thanks Gabe. And a helpful reminder that other products are now available.

Two things puzzle me (and make me wonder how accurate that article is despite the "inside source"):

1. it seems odd that CryptoPrevent is said only to stop recognised virus signatures - that is not at all what I understood it to do (and does not tally at all with the fact that one has to whitelist programs such as Spotify in appdata);

2. when you say you've installed MBARW, do you mean the component of the paid MBAM program, or an old beta? I couldn't find any indication on the MB website that they're still publishing the beta that is described by PCMag.

I got it from Bleepingcomputer, but you can download it in many places. It doesn't bear the name "Beta" anymore, but it is free for personal use.

I think the main thing cryptoprevent does is stop executables from running that have a doctored extension (like InnocentFile.pdf.exe) and that are running from an uncommon folder (like user folders, download and temp folders) and has a large whitelist for this. The UI is just really complicated and generally terrible.

Neil Rubenking has been doing security software reviews since about 150 years. I'm sure (sometimes) pcmag gets paid for reviews and they might not always be perfectly objective (also the differences between paid software are often quite subtle, you can arguably order them in many ways), but generally I trust what he says. If you are a fraud, you don't hang around for such a long time.

Finally, it is ****ing MALWAREBYTES that he recommends. They have been a force in the anti malware community for many years and MBAM is one of the most used and recommended products. I don't need no pcmag review to know their products are top notch.

Yeah, we can all get behind that last part. Nothing but good things to say about Malwarebytes.

Malwarebytes anti exploit is terrific at stopping exploits, I've tested it myself with metasploit. It's not real well known cause its kinda new.

Theres a free version, but unfortunately you have to buy it to get pdf exploit protection, which is a biggie.