.
And of course VoodooShield does not completely uninstall itself, leaving:
-- 24 registry items
-- 40 files in 7 mb
-- 1 service item -- VoodooShieldService

... all of which VoodooShield tells you to clean up yourself, MANUALLY.

See:
http ://oi65. tinypic. com/30w2lh5. jpg

Are we having fun yet?

Look, folks, GOTD is where vendors present their full products, free, and stand back, expecting feedback, and here it is, MY experience of their offering.

Thank you for the opportunity to explore VoodooShield.

You're welcome for my sharing my experience.
.

Peter Blaise,

You seems to don't understand the Application Whitelist and Anti-Executable concept. You want Anti-Executable to protect against Phishing, etc like an Internet Security Suite. Your posts reflect you are not knowledgeable enough on different protection mechanism. You seems to think a product should work, have features, functions, design, etc as per your taste. A Dev always welcome suggestions and criticism. But your posts show ignorance, And you are trolling VoodooShield. The Dev shouldn't reply and entertain you.

.
[ khan ],

Thanks for sharing your insight.

Me?

I'm just responding to the lead-in claims here on GOTD, choosing not to "show ignorance" of their marketing claims, namely:

"... VoodooShield is the only user-friendly
toggling computer lock that
automatically locks your computer
when it is at risk ..."

... and then I consider the challenge of the risks that we all experience in the wild, namely:

-- infection,

-- invasion,

-- theft ( of computer data, and "keys" to other resources like bank accounts ),

-- scams,

-- phishing,

... ya know the stuff that the "... cybersecurity industry ..." seems unable to protect us from,

... and, lead by Voodooshield marketing promises, I was specifically looking for their:

"... automatic lock when my computer was at risk ...".

Instead, VoodooShield blocked Microsoft Windows File Explorer ( ! ), and blocked the routine installation and updating of software from free [ Ninite. com ] installer, among other things.

Additionally, it never found my suite of malware, but I never ran my suite of malware, so at least it did not appear to "waste time" hunting for latent risk.

I shared my experience of VoodooShield here -- my experience of their programs AND their marketing -- as this is what this GOTD thread is all about.

That my experience of VoodooShield was a disaster, and I reported it copiously, including screenshots, some vendors would be grateful for.

If VoodooShield's marketing department "... don't understand the Application Whitelist and Anti-Executable concept ..." when they promise:

"...VoodooShield is the only user-friendly
toggling computer lock that
automatically locks your computer
when it is at risk ..."

... then the vendor can consider where the problem really is -- their own inaccurate overpromising marketing people, perhaps?

That's not "my taste", that's their promise.

To other GOTD users here who feel that their experience and or expectations of VoodooShield are different from mine, all I can say is ... please do share,

-- share your experience of the product,

-- and in this case especially, please share your experience of their marketing promises.

They say:

" ... VoodooShield also includes a Machine Learning
/ Artificial Intelligence decision engine
and a multi-engine antivirus scanner with 65+ engines ..."

Sounds like an anti virus program to me.

They say:

"... VoodooShield might block a few items
for the first couple of days,
but it learns very quickly,
so it will be as quiet as a church mouse
after a few days
and will simply lock your computer when you are browsing the web or checking email ..."

Not my experience.

And why would I want a program to block my browsing or email?

I USE my computer to browse and check email.

Is THAT how they make me secure, by blocking my browsing and email?

Why not just uninstall my network card driver?

=8^o

They say:

"... VOODOOSHIELD WILL TOGGLE BETWEEN ON AND OFF,
DEPENDING ON WHETHER YOU ARE AT RISK OR NOT ..."

Ah-ha, they say it will toggle "on" and "off" ... let's see what the words "on" and "off" mean to them:

They say:

"... OFF Mode (Unlocked): Your computer is unlocked,
and VoodooShield is learning which programs to allow
so it will not block them once VoodooShield locks your computer.
You can also change to this mode
if you need to install or allow additional software.
Your computer is NOT protected in this mode ..."

So ... the word "off" to them means ... "on but not protecting" ... so ... it's not really "off" then, is it?

They probably mean toggling between "watching and learning" and "taking action", they do not really mean "off" and "on", because they seem to say that it is always "on" in some capacity.

Marketing, eh?

They say:

"... ON Mode (Locked): Your computer is locked and you are protected.
When VoodooShield automatically toggles to ON Mode,
it takes a snapshot of the currently running software,
and automatically allows everything in this snapshot.
VoodooShield also automatically allows
currently installed software and specific critical Windows system files.
Any software that was not allowed when VoodooShield was OFF is blocked ..."

A computer "... allowing everything in this snapshot ..." is NOT a "... locked ..." computer.

Marketing, eh?

Umm ... so the word "on" to them does not mean VoodooShield is "on", even though there is a shield with the letters "ON" on it, they mean "locked", meaning ... meaning that anything not already whitelisted is blocked, I guess ... so ... that really means "blocked" not "locked", because in theory, whenever the shield says "ON" on it, the computer can still execute any whitelisted programs, the computer is not "locked", it can do other things, maybe many other things, but non-whitelisted programs are "blocked".

Marketing, eh?

So, VoodooShield marketing people, and the program interface designers themselves, have no common idea what are their meanings of the words

-- "on"

-- "off"

-- "locked"

-- "blocked"

... they do not know the meanings of those words to each other,
... they do not know the meanings of those words to the general marketplace,
... they do not know the meanings of those words to the end user,
... they do not know the meanings of those words to the competition
... ( and they do not know the meanings of those words to the laws of physics ? ).
__________

No one needs to give feedback here, certainly not including screenshots as I have, we can just ignore the GOTD offering and or ignore the GOTD thread, take what we want and leave the rest -- which either of us could do anywhere in this thread, including not responding to each other.

I learn by writing, and sharing, and reading feedback from my fellow GOTD members and vendors alike, and reading their experiences, even if anyone's experience of the software is a disaster, and, as I wrote, I'd think the vendor would want to read the experience of an end user, especially a disaster.

"Security" and "anti malware" offerings are fraught with over-promising and under-delivering, and at least VoodooShield acknowledges that they expect people to use VoodooShield only as a supplement to another "anti virus" program, even though VoodooShield claims to incorporate the resources of a few dozen "anti virus" programs ...

... what the hay, more marketing hooey again ?

As if Voodooshield is saying:

"... we have 65+ anti virus engines,
but we don't trust them,
and neither should you,
so you NEED your own other anti virus program ..."

I got THAT message, and I do not trust VoodooShield either, by their own recommendation.
.

Clinton Fisher,

VoodooShield is primarily an Anti-Executable software. There are 3 anti-executable software that are mostly discussed and compared in the forums, etc. All the 3 are good and popular software. They are VoodooShield, AppGuard and NoVirusThanks. You should compare an anti-executable software in its category.

The reason for the "'Cult like" following is, the Dev turned an advanced users software i.e anti-executable into a majority of users i.e average users software.
Anti-Executable are kinda MANUAL software i.e you need to create Rules, Policies, etc to use it effectively. And VoodooShield Dev created an AUTOMATIC anti-executable, you don't need to know or create Rules, Policies, etc, just install and start using it.

False Positives - There are no FPs with an Application Whitelisting or Anti-Executable software. Their job is to allow the whitelisted and block unknown software. And VoodooShield is better and easier anti-executable of the 3 mentioned here.

About the Usability - VoodooShield's innovative approach is what has made it popular and an automatic anti-executable, and easy enough for the majority i.e average users.
VoodooShield provides you protection Modes, and settings to set it for the novices or average users without losing much protection.
I would suggest to take a look into the newly introduced "Security Posture". I call it "One-Click" protection, it gives you different protection levels to select and set with a click. Security Posture is available in the Pro version. This giveaway gives you a free license to try and test the Pro version for a good 1 year.

.
[ khan ],

Maybe this is merely a wording problem?

-- On the one hand, you say that VoodooShield has no false positives.

-- On the other hand, you say there are

---- settings without losing much protection, and

---- different protection levels.

So ... losing some protection, and using levels of lesser-protection ( ... versus ... using levels of more-protection ... ) result in ... what, if not something malicious going on and not being identified?

Are you saying it's ok for VoodooShield to miss some malicious activity ... because it's hasn't actually whitelisted that malicious stuff, it's just not ( effectively ) "blacklisted" that malicious stuff ... yet ... or maybe ever, if you select a different protection level?

Regarding any security or anti malware product, I think the concept of "false positive" is either

-- blocking something that is not malicious,

-- allowing something that is malicious.

According to other's reports herre, your post, VoodooShield's own information, and my experience, VoodooShield does BOTH:

-- blocking something that is not malicious,

-- allowing something that is malicious.

If those are not "false positives", are you suggesting another term, is VoodooShield suggesting another term?

Thanks for your prior post trying to clear things up, but your post begs follow up questions.
.

khan, I cannot edit my post above, here's the last idea

12. Vulnerable Processes are hard coded in VS, and works good. Vulnerable Processes option (to customize/edit) would be good for advanced users.

.
[ khan ],

You write that VoodooShield has ON and OFF modes.

But as far as I can tell, VoodooShield is NEFER actually OFF.

In spite of the shield having ON and OFF written on it's face, it's always watching and learning.

The ON and OFF indicators are NOT whether the program itself is ON or OFF,

... but whether VoodooShield's BLOCKING feature is ON of OFF.

-- ON means it's READY to BLOCK anything that ( 1 ) it sees that ( 2 ) is NOT in it's whitelist.

-- OFF means it's not blocking anything, but is only watching and learning,

... however slowly,

... as malicious activity might be compromising your computer, your data, your security, access to your resources outside the computer, and so on.

But VoodooShield is never OFF, only VoodooShield's BLOCKING capabilities and features are sometimes OFF:

-- BLOCKING is OFF when the shield says OFF

-- BLOCKING is OFF when a malicious activity is happening that ( 1 ) is not being watched and or ( 2 ) has been whitelisted.

Do you have quotes from VoodooShield or experience otherwise?

Thanks for exploring this and sharing with your fellow GOTD members.
.

Steel Tormentor, thank you for the suggestions! It might look like VS is executing the scanned file, but I promise, it is not ;). As you mentioned, there are other ways to create the context menu, and I will review the other options. The last time I did, I found this method worked the best, but it would not hurt to review it again.

It would be super simple to list the specific engines, but there are certain terms that we must follow, and this is one of them. If a threat is detected, you can click on the "X Threats" label and it will list the detected threats. You can then click on each threat, which will perform a google search of the threat.

.
[ Steel Tormentor ],

What is SA+?

Thanks.
.

.
[ dan@ voodooshield. com ],

Hide And Seek:

-- VoodooShield will not tell us what anti malware program identifies any file as malware.

-- Anti malware programs will not tell us what the found malware is.

-- We can Google search to see if anyone else has figured out the above cryptic non-sharing myopia.

All this to ... what? ... to protect their malware discovery routines from being reverse engineered by malware designers and by the competition?

So ... VoodooShield does nothing more than anyone else.

Specifically, when VoodooShield identifies, say, Steve Gibson's programs from [ GRC. com ] as having malware, we DO or do NOT block them?

Since there's no information anywhere about the found malware, we must make our decision to trust, or not, based on other things.

If we base our decision to trust a file based on other things, then why even interrupt our decision making process with VoodooShield?

Thanks.
.

Peter Blaise,

It's SecureA+ which is a combo of whitelisting and local+cloud AV.
But in my usage I disabled everything related to virus detection/Universal AV as I found it to be buggy and sometimes the server timed out so it has little use as I'm already using other AV for virus/malware detection. Therefore I use it only as an application whitelisting.

Every suspicious file/process/script is just one click away from sending it to VirusTotal ~ the result should be pretty much the same with VS' 60+ engines (but with much more detail) -- this is why I'm not sure whether VS or SA+ I would keep on using.

AV-Lab has 5 out 5 star ratings for both.

Peter Blaise,
SecureAPlus. I like it

DataDragon, thank you for the suggestions! VS does not remove existing malware, but anything that was inadvertently whitelisted will be automatically removed from the whitelist once the malware is removed by traditional malware removal tools. Basically, VS cleans up the whitelist on each startup, and removes any item from the whitelist that has been removed from computer. Also, we already have a realtime scanner that will help with the issue you are raising... I just have not activated it yet.

You can pause the countdown timer by mousing over the user prompt. If a threat is detected, you can click on the "X Threats" label and it will list the detected threats. You can then click on each threat, which will perform a google search of the threat.

Hi Ron, yes, all updates are free, even for major version numbers... i.e. VS 5.0.

Hi Kim... VS uses a kernel mode driver to intercept process creation before new processes are created. I think it would be extremely difficult, and probably impossible to not have a static install path with a security software that utilizes a kernel mode driver.

Jerry, that section specifically deals with error reporting. Please read the entire section below and you will understand.

6. Consent to Use of Data; Privacy. You agree that VoodooSoft may collect and use personally identifiable, technical and related information, not limited to technical information about your computer, system and application software that is gathered periodically and automatically to facilitate and improve upon the provision of the Software, Software updates, support and other services to you. This information includes Error Reports. The Software automatically sends error reports to VoodooSoft that describe which software components had errors. VoodooSoft respects your privacy. VoodooSoft’s use of personally identifiable information is subject to the terms of the VoodooSoft Privacy Policy www.voodooshield.com/Privacy.aspx.

In other words, we have to include this section in our EULA, just in case the error report exception message that is automatically generated, happened to contain something that is personally identifiable.

dan@voodooshield.com . . . Sorry Dan, you may think that's what it says, and you may have told your attorneys that's what you wanted -- but I'm a trial attorney and that's NOT what your agreement states!

Error Reports are INCLUDED but are not exclusive.

You ask a user to agree to almost LIMITLESS accumulation of personally identifiable information. Your use of that data is only limited by your Privacy Policy -- which I'm guessing are as equally broad. Gathering -- and sending back to VS -- is periodic and automatic.

@Jerry is basically correct.

OLT, I appreciate your insight, thank you! The thing is, this issue has been raised publicly on more than one occasion in the past, and each time we reviewed this with our attorneys, and they assured me that when our Privacy Policy is referenced from this section, they are both correct. If anyone is interested, I can put them in touch with our lead attorney, Jim, and he will explain it to you.

William Mekeel, something must be blocking VS. You might have to disable your other security software.

Yes, the BD / VS combo is quite popular... it's a great combo!

Colin Kay, thank you for the suggestion! Yeah, we thought about doing that, but then we were thinking... "what novice or average user ever adjusts security software settings?". I mean, I have installed various security software for the last 20 years for clients, and I never changed any of the settings. The settings are there for advanced users who just want to tweak the software to their liking.

But in general, security software should work out of the box in its default settings, and cover all of the attack vectors that are in the scope of the security product. If security software requires tailoring or adjustments, then it has failed. Especially since pretty much no one adjusts security software settings, and especially since malware does not discriminate... every endpoint is subject to the exact same attacks.

Having said that, I will think about what you are suggesting and see if it makes sense for us to implement these changes... thank you!

Colin Kay, Colin Kay, there is a training mode available for VS to get acquainted with your setting. Then there is also smart mode & normal mode, all are acutely set as per user need. VS developer take real care on that side so you can safely use training mode for few days & afterwards set to normal or smart mode it will keep you well protected.

Unfortunately not... VS utilizes a kernel mode driver, as described above in Kim's comment (26).

Luis, On the first start it scans the apps you're already running in your Program Files folders and when you start those programs it will not stop and lock the computer them to ask you if you want to run them or not and the files it stops from running are uploaded for analysis with 50+ anti-virus blacklists. I would rather go on the internet without anti-virus and with Voodoo shield than the opposite but I run both except one fo my computers.

Tranmontane, the basic functionality will remain, the program will just revert back to the free edition, the difference between Free and Pro can be found here https://voodooshield.com/#download

charles bell,
1. Install the app.
2. Startup the app.
3. You'll be welcomed with double window; left widow is for you to enter received license key (right widow is for requesting, per email, license for FREE version).

magdy mikhael,

Software of field the in experienced to be program the downloading is who everyone on computer the starts who anyone for program good very a.

sounds the same either way...

Michael Landeche, Same issue here