VISS McAfee Security
bonefish3
Newbie

So I can not seem to load it on my desktop for some reason and was told I only needed to load it there by installer.  Is that correct?  Shouldn't it be loaded on each computer (desktop or laptop)?  I was told that the router has a firewall and not to worry.  This makes no sense.  If so I assume I just log in to my account on each computer and download?

0 Likes
Re: VISS McAfee Security
RMN3
Enthusiast - Level 3

I am not actually answering your question, but I would avoid VISS. You have to pay a monthly fee for it and it will likely bog down your computers. You can get better antivirus that wont slow down your computer for free. I would recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, or Avira.

Re: VISS McAfee Security
oldfashioned
Specialist - Level 2

I definitely agree.  I was using VISS powered by McAfee, paying $5.99 per month and guess what?  Not that long ago, I couldn't get onto the Internet at all and I hired a local technician to find out that my computer had all of these viruses which VISS never detected.

I never knew about the free anti-virus programs.  I now use avast.com and malwarebytes.com and they're easy to upgrade too.  They're much more thorough.  I'm very grateful for anything I can get for free these days.

Don't waste your time with VISS.  It's garbage and it will cost you over the long run.  This is a program for which Verizon gets the lowest bid and being cheap about stuff like that has its long term consequences.

Re: VISS McAfee Security
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

Without mentioining the type of infection the PC had, VISS might have not been able to detect it anyways. I agree in that there are better (Free) solutions that destroy the suite in every department, but in the case of malware, if the system was infected with a Rootkit for example, those tend to conceal themselves from all but scanners that have specialized in the removal of a rootkit. Removal of them often breaks the install of Windows if it isn't done correctly and completely. Lately Rootkits have gotten particularly nasty, using some old methods of infecting disks (The Master Boot Record), and that almost often guarantees a reformat/repartition of the drive or a rewrite of the drive's MBR from a bootable disk utility (Gets complex for people who are not familiar with DOS, since many tools that boot like that will make anyone come across a command line somewhere). many scanners don't exactly know how to fix infected MBRs/remove hidden partitions still to this day due to the wide range of data that could be seen. See if you can find out from the tech guy what he cleaned out from the system.

Since VISS is based around McAfee, I've known McAfee Residential solutions to be the bottom of the barrel since the late 90s. The same goes with Computer Associates Consumer products. They simply seem to run a dated scanning engine and their signatures seem to be lacking in some aspects. When free scanners are performing much better, it probably says something. I know McAfee was recently acquired by Intel, so I'm hoping they get back into shape. CA, well, their old flagship products that were sold to corporations such as InnoculateIT and some other, more recent program I cannot remember the name of, those held up pretty well.

Re: VISS McAfee Security
questioning_old
Contributor - Level 2

Thank you for mentioning Rootkit.  I use the malwarebytes in conjunction with avast and avast has the capacity to remove Rootkit - it's mentioned on the clean up list on the quick scan and avast has upgrades that download automatically.   I actually had never heard of Rootkit until you mentioned it.  Those 2 programs are very thorough and pick up on infected files a lot quicker than VISS ever could which is important, because that is expressly what led to my accumulation of viruses.  So I am going to see how that works over time and if nothing else, I can always switch over to Norton anti-virus, the kind you have to pay for and order on line every year for the upgrade. 

The tech who was at my house cleaned out 3 bugs and viruses.  He did a good job and I have no reason to doubt what he said.  I really don't remember the details of what he cleaned out.  He was very smart to predict from what I was saying over the telephone that my problem was due to viruses that VISS did not detect.  He recommended these 2 free virus programs from his experience.  Believe me, he was welcome company at my house and I felt that I was paying him for his knowledge.  He even builds his own computers.  Unfortunately, I deal with a lot of time constraints but he got my computer up and running efficiently and quicker and so far, I've been very happy with the solution to the problem.

I also learned how to do the disk cleanup to get rid of unnecessary temporary files and how to clean out the browsing history, temp files, and cookies from my browsers, Internet Explorer and Firefox. 

So with all of this routine maintenance, I'm in good shape now.

Thanks for mentioning your concerns.

0 Likes
Re: VISS McAfee Security
Lakesi2008
Enthusiast - Level 1

Thanks 🙂 I'm going to download those two right now and cancel my VISS subscription!