Site Warnings and In-Site Ad Blocking

Hi gr1ll3d_ch33z
 
Welcome to the Webroot Community!
 
Happy to hear you just upgraded. Our SecureAnywhere program is pretty great! :D
 
I understand your concern, but the good news is that SecureAnywhere does have the search annotations just like our older product did. The only difference is that they are now green check marks that appear by safe websites instead of the Webroot "W".
 
That being said, if you just upgraded, you may have to restart your computer and try the search again and the annotations should come up. Also, keep in mind that they will only show up if you are using Internet Explorer of Mozilla Firefox web browsers.
 
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks for the welcome. I've always believed the webroot had the best spyware software in the business, then you guys started the anti-virus and firewall esstentials, and I was really pleased with that as well.
 
I am using internet explorer, but I don't see any green checkmarks beside the site links in google searches like I use to. Is there like an add-on I have to turn on in IE or is there a config setting in the secure anywhere that I missed?

Heh... I'm running the 64-bit version of IE on my computer. I just opened the 32 bit version and I see the green checks now.
 
Why is it that the old Webroot Security Essentials worked with the 64bit version of IE, but not newer (WSA-E) version?

Hi gr1ll3d_ch33z,
 
I'm glad we were able to pinpoint the problem!
 
Honestly, the fact that your Webroot Internet Security Essentials' search annotations feature worked on the 64 bit IE is a unique and interesting case. I really don't know why the annotations showed up because the program wasn't built to have that feature function in IE 64 bit.
 
Nevertheless, this is still the case and the search annotations will only work for the 32 bit version of IE when using WSA. Sorry for the confusion!
 
Let me know if there is anything else I can answer for you.
 
Regards,

Actually, could it have worked in the 64bit of IE if I had the webroot bar installed at the top of IE? I had it installed at the top, and I've definitely been using the 64bit version at all times. I'll just use the 32bit version now, not really a big deal. Just wondering if that might have made the difference though.

Hey gr1ll3d_ch33z,
 
Having the toolbar installed would not have made a difference because the toolbar plays no part in the functionality of the search annotations feature.
 
That being said, however, the fact that you had the toolbar up on the 64 bit IE solidifies the uniqueness of your case as it shouldn't have shown up there to begin with. 
 
Let me know if you have any other questions! 😃

I"ve been running WSA: Essentials for several months now. I don't feel as protected as the previous Webroot Security Essentials.
 
The Site Warnings all shows up as check marks, sites that use to show up as threats no longer do. I don't seem to get blocked from websites that have malicious software. In-Site Ad-blocking doesn't seem to work at all, as sites that had blocked ads, are no longer blocked.
 
It also seems that it never finds any viruses or spyware anymore on my computer during scans. I use to get a trojan from time to time. I feel like it's not doing it's job, or it's doing such a good job that there is literally nothing on my computer that is a threat.
 
What sets me off about this is that in google searches nothing shows up a threat, when at least several sites would show up unknown or listed as a threat. I use to like seeing when webroot would run its scan and find several items to be deleted, a few spy cookies. Made me feel like it was doing something. Now I feel like it's doing nothing.
 
Is it possible it didn't install properly or is it doing all it's protection transparently?!

Hey! Welcome back gr1ll3d_ch33z!
 
While I understand where your concerns are coming from, it's important to understand that Webroot SecureAnywhere is a completely different product compared to our 2011 version. We saw what traditional antivirus programs were doing wrong so we created a product that works faster and more efficiently all while protecting your computer more thoroughly than before. Because of our cloud-based protection, there is constant communication with the server and the definitions update automatically, which cuts out the previous window of vulnerability when you had to manually update the definitions yourself. So this example (one out of many advantages of SecureAnywhere) applies to your second point. For too long, people have had the mindset that an antivirus needs to find viruses constantly to show that it's working properly. By all means, if you have an infection and it is picked up and removed, that's a great thing! However, it's even better when your computer is well protected and prevents the infection in the first place! *A few months back, I wrote a thorough article on the differences between SecureAnywhere and the older Webroot products...https:///t5/Webroot-SecureAnywhere-Antivirus/Old-Webroot-vs-WSA-A-friendlier-brisker-safer-take-on-internet/td-p/5155 if you'd like*
 
So back to your second concern: I hope that the reason is the latter and that SecureAnywhere is really doing a darn good job and there are no threats on your computer. Do you have any reason to believe otherwise? Is your computer performance unusually slow? Are you getting redirects, strange errors, etc? If so, you are always welcome to submit a support ticket. If you have an infection and Webroot didn't pick it up for whatever reason, we want to know and help you get it removed. We offer completely free virus removal services and support for all of our customers.
 
Regarding the site warnings, a search result flagged as malicious before may since have been pulled by Google and will no longer show up in the results at all, and thus won't be flagged. Another possibility is that the site you're concerned about no longer hosts malware. Many sites that may have been compromised months ago may not be compromised now and have since been reevaluated and reclassified as "safe". So what used to be a red "x" may now be a green check mark. Nevertheless, while I don't recommend personally testing this, you can search for a list of phishing sites and then throw some of them in a search and we'll flag them as "bad" if they in fact still are.
 
Finally, on the topic of cookies, you're right that we will no longer pick up a spy cookie or any other cookie for that matter. We now know much more about cookies and no longer consider them a threat. In fact, we realized that many cookies are beneficial for many websites' functionalities. Many customers have asked about why we don't pick them up anymore so we wrote a Knowledge Base Article about it many months ago. It was one of our very first and you can find it https:///t5/Webroot-SecureAnywhere/Why-doesn-t-SecureAnywhere-find-cookies-anymore-like-the/ta-p/380
 
I hope that eases your worries a bit and addresses your concerns. Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to help answer for you! :D
 
Regards,

Thanks for the information Yegor. They were both good reads. I'm assuming it still monitors the computer, in the sense that it detects a trojan from a cookie, or website, it would remove it.
 
In the end I couldn't believe that webroot would go backwards as oppose to forwards. I guess I'm just more used to the traditional sense of Antivirus and Spyware programs.
 
I remember loving the Webroot Security Essentials 2011, I was excited that you guys had come out with an antivirus and I could have spyware and antivirus and firewall all from one program.
 
I haven't had any speed issues on my computer, everything is working fine as far as I can tell. Maybe I'm just overly paranoid something is lurking in the background that I can't see, and when seeing the 2011 AV/spyware protection catch all these cookies all the time, I felt safer knowing that it was catching stuff.
 
I also use the clean up feature a lot with WSA to get rid of all my cookies, which I find is a nice handy tool.
 
What I really found interesting about WSA is that it works with some of the Windows software, like the firewall. Which I realized I had off when I upgraded, and when I read an article on the forums here about the windows firewall should be on with WSA firewall, I had to go and turn it back on.
 
Is there any other things like the firewall that I should also have on within Internet Explorer or Windows that works with the WSA program?
 
Also, just got my first Android phone, and likely going to purchase the yearly subscription for the phone app you guys have! :)
 
Thanks again for the info, Yegor.

Cookies are harmless see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie but if you want to remove cookies just go into your Browser and delete them Manually or as you did with the WSA Cleaning feature also Webroot SecureAnywhere is a very powerful Anti-Malware!
 
HTH,
 
TH