BleepingComputer.com: Trend Micro product questions?

I have general questions about these two products. I have been using RUBotted on my home laptops and PC and work PC, one laptop running Vista the rest are XP. I have recently (yes, since the April 1st Conficker issues have been made news to hear) gotten notices on each machine that I have a bot trying to connect out, noting a malicious DNS query. As expected, after the notice it prompts the user to clean with HouseCall, which you can download and try for free, but it turns into a trial download of TrendMicro Internet Security.

So here's the questions:

1. Is RUBotted trustworthy and reliable? Would it present false alarms (even possibly in a timely manner) in order to "scare" a user into downloading the trial version of TrendMicro Internet Security? Can I trust that what it is telling me is true? I am not an amateur to bots and malware issues that might be infecting me, but I'm not sure that every notice from RUBotted is legit.

2. Is it worth verifying that I have no bot infections by installing Trend Micro's product, Internet Security? In order to do so, it would require me to remove AVG, Zone Alarm, McAfee Site Advisor and Spybot S&D so far. I stopped at that point before it likely asked me to remove Malwarebytes and Spywareblaster, which would render my computer rather unprotected, relying on a product that is a trial version which I am not so familiar with.

So, it TM RUBotted trustable, and is their TIS product worth paying for in spite of using MBAM, Spybot, ZoneAlarm, AVG & others?

This post has been edited by Eric RBA: 12 April 2009 - 08:03 PM

I am still looking for some help and answers, if someone has a minute or two and some thoughts?

I had never heard of that program until I read your post but I did a google search on it and found this forum that might be of interest to you. Seems a few people here had the same problem back in November as you are having now. No other program found anything suspicious on their computers.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.as...hreadid=2250015

Personally, I would not install anything that wanted me to uninstall all of my protection.

You might want to run a scan with SuperAntiSpyware and see if it finds anything.

This program had been discussed previously. See this topic.

Since it is still in beta stage, I would hardly consider its results trustworthy. And as for uninstalling other security programs just for a scan with their suite, is a bit much. Think of it like asking a doctor for a second opinion, you don't ask the same doctor that gave you the first now do you?

Back to RUBotted. I am still not sure how it identifies bot-like behaviour. If it does this by looking at port activity, the results could very well be false positives. You'd have to study your firewall logs to know for sure.

To be honest, while the idea behind the tool is interesting, to me it feels somewhat gimicky. Maybe it's my cynical side speaking though.

Thanks for the help and the links guys. I've decided that I'll just stick to what I have been using and remove RUBotted. At least for now. I do like how it operates, so I'll look at it again when it's not Beta.