What is the reasoning against using Comodo products?

I see hinted here and there on NBR, Wilderssecurity and other forums that Comodo has a sort of anti-fanbase and some people are very strongly against using their products. Albeit a seemingly small amount, I've never seen any reason for this past some foggy issues with security certificates a while ago, and one account more recently which involved a reseller of the certs being hacked (iirc) and had nothing to do with Comodo itself.

Their full suite seems to have gotten significantly better over the past few years and I've used their firewall since version 3 with no problems at all, even messed around with their Dragon browser.

So I'm curious, what grudge is there to hold against Comodo?

 

Comodo the company or better put, it's CEO 'Melih', has a reputation as profiling himself as some sort of prophet.
Then there are the Comodo 'disciples', kiddo's who go overboard in their praise of CIS and the company and who will behave childish/trollish against those who criticize Comodo/CIS.
CIS also used to come in final versions which would be better described as 'obviously still a beta'-version but afaik that's something of the past.

CIS is a nice product. If it suits ones needs, I really see no reason not to use it.
And for the 'tough guy' talk occassionally coming out of the Comodo office and the trolling from some of it's followers; meh, I just ignore it.

 

Don't judge products by the companies. If the product is good that should be enough for you.

I've heard some things about their past, like Baserk said but it's not going to get me to uninstall a product that I feel protects my computer.

 

tried the trial out last week and a normal full scan takes just over an hour with avg/avast/wse but with comodo it was 2 hours 15 minutes

 

"Normal" scan parameters vary widely between products.

As far as Comodo products go, they're not exactly user friendly, but much more configurable. CIS is more complete than what is typically available for free, and very rarely has conflicts with other programs. I usually run CIS and MSSE simultaneously without ever noticing any significant resource hogging. CIS has an AV built in that's updated daily, but it's not exactly the best out there - Comodo usually gets dinged on it pretty hard. Comodo is better known for firewalls. However, if you're relying on antivirus and active scans for security, you've already screwed up and been infected, so the AV portion of the suite really shouldn't matter.

As far as the company, Comodo is not the only security company to get hacked - RSA, issuer of the ubiquitous security tokens, was also hacked around the same time.

 

Alright then.
I've noticed what you say, Baserk in that some of the people against Comodo really bring out the fanatical guns. I've seen several adamant claims made that secure information was being stolen from their computer but no proof of that was given and no packet sniffing attempted. I was just curious if there was anything more to the Comodo dark side than the much more mundane certificate stuff.

 

The AV's detection rates are not great. It's very low on resources and, frankly, you don't need an AV at all if you have your Defense+ and Firewall set up properly so theirs works well enough.

I'd recommend you use a different AV though and simply only install the Comodo Firewall and Defense+

 

I've nitpicked through a fair number of claims that Comodo is stealing info so that it's fair to say that it's nearly all speculation rumor and anecdotal. The biggest naysayers are also the most paranoid about data collection. Comodo's EULA explicitly says they track usage statistics - therefore, privacy nuts refuse to use it, just as they refuse to use Google because Google keeps search records. What is typically left out of the discussion is that nearly all major software companies reserve the right to collect usage data.

The most frequently cited spots on the internet:
Evidence Of Comodo Firewall Stealing Peoples Private Information? - Wilders Security Forums
The Portable Freeware Collection • View topic - About Comodo products & privacy issues

Post 14 in this thread is probably the most enlightening:
The dark side of Comodo products - Wilders Security Forums
There's no good reason to snipe Comodo without calling out McAfee and Symantec. The way I see it, privacy is the only tool in the kit to attack CIS with other than middling AV performance. It doesn't invade your computer, make itself uninstallable, or quarantine false positives during definition updates.

 

Really good post. Thank you woofer.

 

Yeah the anti-Comodo group definitely has something against Melih. From what I seen he seems OK to me.

 

I cannot say I have anything against Comodo based on Melih (whatever that is).
I personally see Comodo as unnecessary given that most of it's functions are covered by Windows Firewall (which granted would require some fine-tuning before you get it to the same level- but even stock settings are enough for most).

 

UAC + Windows firewall are capable of covering most of the same bases as Comodo's suite does. However, they're a pain in the to get set up in a reasonable amount of time to obtain tight security, and there's no such thing as a sand box built into windows. Stock windows firewall will cover the bulk of issues, no question, but I prefer to decouple my security from an OS that is the most popular to attack.

 

But the average user really doesn't require extremely tight security in the first place.
Stock settings on Win 7 firewall for example with a decent AV such as MSE or Avast is enough for most.

Then again, when I was working on people's computers (removing bloat, and setting up the OS to be as clean as possible - basically stock settings), I usually took a few mins to have them write down a few small instructions on how to use the AV in case something happens.

 

I believe the exact opposite - the average user needs the most security, especially the average user who thinks he knows about security because he has some, but still engages in risky behavior. The advanced user knows better and can get away with having the least security (see http://forum.notebookreview.com/security-anti-virus-software/524089-guide-how-safely-use-windows-without-anti-virus-security.html and other threads like it)