Complaints and Issues

[zongamin]

Whilst the idea of a free native light weight AV option of OSX sounds like a good idea, iantivirus has too many flaws to make it worthwhile. I recommend that anyone still using it should remove it immediately.

- The 'CPU' issue - a universal problem, repeatedly reported and never fixed where the iavd process takes up 100% CPU power. PCTools shows no interest at all in fixing this.
- The bogus threat list - you include viruses that could only infect Classic systems on PPC machines - some from version 6! You also include 'threats' from older versions of OSX that won't run on intel machines either. If you are going to exclude Windows malware, then you should exclude these for the same reason.
- It acts like malware. On launch it adds itself to your start up items, without warning or request. Any program that wants to load on launch must ask permission first, otherwise it is no better than the 'threats' it tries to protect you against.

You might say 'What is the point of Antivirus' that doesn't load on launch?' Well because it can't be trusted not to try and burn out your CPU it can't be left loaded anyway. The option to open it and run a scan should exist without forcing its way into launch items.

[tip-top]

- It acts like malware. On launch it adds itself to your start up items, without warning or request. Any program that wants to load on launch must ask permission first, otherwise it is no better than the 'threats' it tries to protect you against.

You might say 'What is the point of Antivirus' that doesn't load on launch?' Well because it can't be trusted not to try and burn out your CPU it can't be left loaded anyway. The option to open it and run a scan should exist without forcing its way into launch items.

Don't all antivirus software launch themselves at startup?

[AChen]

1. This is one, we've been testing and have not been able to reproduce the problem. However, I will spend more time on this and will see whether anything turns up. I will try to get back to you in the next few days.

2. We are committed to protect Intel based Mac platforms version 10.5 and above. our MAC DB is carefully consisted of only MAC related threats. We specifically were careful not to clog the DB and system performance with irrelevant threats that the MAC OS will not be able to do so by itself. Our DB consists of mainly signatures to protect against all notorious cyber-threats attempting to gain access to your Mac and personal information. iAntiVirus protects you against Mac specific viruses, worms, Trojans, keyloggers, dialers, spyware, adware, toolbars and hijackers like the Mac DNS-Changer Trojan, and all of these great features and protection comes free of charge... however if you believe otherwise, that either we have included unnecessary detections or our db is not providing sufficient protection and there are threats that we have missed then you are more than welcome to point them out, and I can assure you that our team of research will address them as first priority.

3. This is the way it was designed (as with all our security software) to behave as we want to be able to provide the user with full protection as soon as it is installed.

[zongamin]

Thanks for the reply - it is appreciated.

1. The CPU issue seems to be pretty widespread - just check this board for other users with the same issue - its even mentioned in the release notes for the lastest version - seems odd to say that you can't reproduce it?

2. You say "We are committed to protect Intel based Mac platforms version 10.5 and above" and yet you include threats for MacOs Classic - the last version of that was OS9 released in 1999. All of the threats listed as 'viruses' from Virus.MacOS.Anti to Virus.MacOS.Zuc cannot infect an Intel Mac running OSX 10.5 or 10.6 - they are for Mac OS Classic which cant even run on any intel mac anyway. I don't understand why you would include any of these in your database.

3. The auto load on start up might not be an issue if iavd didn't have the CPU issue. However you should still prompt users to accept whether they want to load on startup. Some people may only want to run occassional on demand scans.

tip-top asks if all AV software does this - well, no it doesn't. The other free OSX antivirus product, ClamXav does not do this unless the user specifically switches it on. You can run it as an on demand tool if you choose.