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F-Secure Internet Security 2007
Dan Sippy, Mar 11, 2007 1616 hrs ISTF-Secure is world famous for it's PC Security Suites. I mean, if the US Marine Force uses your software, you're good.
Unbreakable Firewall, Impressive Parental Control, Decent Price
Takes long time to quarantine, Sad Spam Filter, Average Anti-Spyware
Expert Rating :
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Horrible Spam Control
F-Secure's spam filter processes the incoming POP3 e-mail stream before it reaches the e-mail client. It automatically configures Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express to put spam and phishing messages into their own folders and includes instructions for manually configuring a number of other popular e-mail clients. Its default Medium filter mode is designed to filter out most spam without misfiling too many valid messages. You can choose the Aggressive mode to block more spam (but there's a risk of blocking valid mail) or the Relaxed mode to protect your valid mail (but more spam ends up in your Inbox).
F-Secure also maintains lists of allowed senders (whitelist) and filtered senders (blacklist). You can populate the whitelist by importing from Outlook's address book, by manually entering an address, or by clicking Allow Sender from the Spam Control menu in Outlook. In comparison BitDefender not only automatically whitelists the sender when you mark a message as Not Spam, but also adds those to whom you send mail.
However, the spam filter reduces the download speed of the email client. Downloading 1,500 random messages all at once took about 10 minutes before I had installed F-Secure. With F-Secure's spam and virus filtering strapped on, downloading, that same collection of messages took over ten times as long (no exaggeration, went to sleep while doing it). Although F-Secure has promised better accuracy in this version due to an updated filter engine, I wish I could say that its lengthy analysis yielded highly accurate results. Alas, that was not the case. F-Secure let a shocking 60 percent of undeniable spam messages into the Inbox, yet still managed to mismark about 8 percent of unquestionably valid messages as spam. This is a dismal performance: way worse than any of its other competitors. It's better to turn it off and use Outlook's built-in junk e-mail filter.
Better Parental Control
Some parental control systems include per-user settings based on Windows accounts, while others define program-specific accounts for each user. F-Secure doesn't quite match either of these models. It lets you define just two profiles, Child and Teenager, each with its own password. By default the Child profile can surf only to sites on a parent-defined list-you can also choose to allow sites "certified as safe for children." The Teenager profile blocks sites that relate to adult themes, drugs, gambling, hate, or weapons-you can also block chat and webmail sites (I hope your parents aren't reading this). There's no elaborate full-week schedule for allowed Internet access times, just a single time span that's applied to every day.
On the first attempt at Internet access during a Windows session, you must log in using the Child, Teenager, or Parent password. When access is blocked due to the Time Lock, a parent can offer an extension on a one-time basis. If a site is incorrectly blocked based on content, a parent can add it to the whitelist or click a link to log in using a different profile. Also, F-Secure logs all sites visited or blocked under non-Parent profiles with icons to indicate why a site was blocked.
I tested the parental control using Internet Explorer and Firefox. It worked well with all three of these. Clearly, it's browser-independent. I tried killing off the parental-control process, without success-I couldn't access the Internet at all. If the parental controls in F-Secure are sufficient for your needs, any kid probably won't be able to break them. If you're a computer wiz, then its different.
Conclusion
Overall Score:
Antivirus: 9/10
Antispam: 3/10
Antispyware: 6/10
Firewall: 9/10
Privacy/Parental: 7/10
With a price of Rs.1600 (MRP) for 12 months and 1000 bucks to upgrade for another 12 months, the FSIS 2007 is an economical buy. They also have a online support request page where registered users can submit their query. Also the vendor, from whom you purchase this software, has to give you a technical support number. For more info, log onto http://www.f-secure.com/. Also 1 CD can be used for 3 PCS (officially, that is).
F-Secure Internet Security 2007's does well in its behavior-based program control and its ability to keep malware out of the system. However, its spyware removal scanner is slow, unwieldy (not sure if that's a word, but you got what I meant), and not as thorough as other Security Suites. Parental control has improved, but your Inbox ain't gonna look pretty. So in the end, we have a "supposedly" great Security Suite which kicked ass against viruses and blocking unwanted incoming internet traffic, but was a major letdown in its Anti-Spyware and Anti-Spam field.
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