You can't uninstall this software without being forced to participate in their survey
I initially only installed "Comodo Firewall" but for some reason they also installed a "Comodo Dragon Browser", which I did not consent to. I always choose the "advanced" installation to uncheck bloatware, but in this case there was none and when you try to uninstall the browser, they force you to participate in their survey otherwise you won't be able to uninstall the software..
In the early 2000's Commodo was actually a reputable consumer-grade firewall vendor. Like all security software vendors, they eventually became that which they fought against.
It's better than most, if not all free options, as long as it stays online, which it doesn't really require much data and it's updates are separate from windows updates so you can let defender do its thing while limiting/blocking windows updates.
If you have serious security needs, yeah paying for a proper one makes sense, I'm not denying that. Just for the 99% of people who don't need beefy security, defender is better than everything else free, and you were already giving your data to microsoft anyway so you might as well get some benefit from it. Defender is actually quite effective, and it has been since W10 at least.
Look you like fondling Microsoft, go ahead. Don't go around telling people how good it feels. Too many false positive, too much information being sent back to Microsoft. No where near enough personalization or settings. Don't get me started on the firewall. Might as well not have one.
It also had options (framed as "levels" of ptotection) that would make more of those pop up prompts at completely nonsensical times about nonsense things - like declareing whatever you just tried to run was using a global hook. I had virtualdub up and opened windows notepad and it tried to tell me that virtualdub was using a global hook as if virtualdub was a threat.
In all my years in IT thats still im the top 10 dumbest things I've seen in software even all these years later.
The issue and why it wss stupid wasn't that it was a hook, its that it was attributing it to any app you opened when by definition a global hook is GLOBAL - you do users no gppd by scarinh them into thinking every global hool is malware frpm whatever random thing they ran. Those alert even would trigger on windows notepad. There is no reasom amy comnination of iser options should do this.
That was piss poor design and they evenyually walked it ba k after months of defending it by implying users amd security researchers were stupid on their forum, simce deleted. Its not in the wayback machine or I'd show you. Thier "fans" dogpiled on the topic after thier staff replied condesdingly.
Not a bug exactly - they didn't think it through. To see what I was talking about you'd need a very very old version. Like way back when it was new. It seemed the that it was the developers that didn't know what a global hook was. They were just very obnoxious about it before finally seeing reason and correcting the behaviour. At the time, it woild fire for -every- global hook. To my knowledge you can mo longer reproduce this, but the reaction they had to someone trying to suggest this wasn't right was enough for me to never go near anything under thier brand ever again.
I've seen a quick video about it on YouTube from a reputable Windows security YouTuber. Can't remember which exactly, probably "ThioJoe" or "The PC Security Channel". I wrote the softwares name down a long time ago and decided to give it a try today.
That's a mistake, always gotta be updated when it comes to these things and look up recent videos for suggestions instead. If you haven't already, make sure to delete everything comodo related from every nook and corner.