and why is everyone using it here? You can get so many free anti virus tools online but somehow people here rather trust this Lion Software & 360 which is according to google.co.uk a virus/malware that collects data. A Taiwanese friend told me it was created by the Chinese government and people here are not aware.. is that true? In Europe I have never heard of 360 while here everyone uses it.

What is 360 ?

So it is free ? But we used software is free too. Maybe this one (360) is more free then our ? Hmm. Need to think..

I think it comes free with all the Ghost XPs people tend to use here..

It is not a malware and it is absulely rumors that this software is backed up by the government. Its popularity is owing to the success of its PR and advertising strategy in China. The software combines antivirus, anti-trojan, software update management, unused files clearance, etc.

360 sucks, along with any other Chinese app my company installed on my office desktop... All Chinese wan in a free app is lots of ads! (I don't know why they are fascinated by advertising, but all their apps seem to have it and when a Chinese colleague looks over my shoulder to see what I'm doing online (another very Chinese thing, nosy buggers!) they are always attracted to any ads on the page I'm using and ask annoying questions about the ads I've been trying to ignore!) Anyway, 360 is like QQ and what have you in China, it creates pop-ups on your screen, which, although annoying, isn't really malware.

Probably it does create a log of everything you do and send it to the government, but that doesn't mean it's government project. QQ stores everything written to servers through out the country and routinely volunteers to give the gov its logs. BTW QQ servers were hacked awhile back, and everyones' chat sessions were stolen.. no doubt they were looking for bank info and such, but even with that massive breach in security, I've never met a Chinese who knows about QQ's loging or the loss of this private data.

I found this info but not sure if its true. However I would rather trust AVG or Threatfire on my machine.. http://www.2-spyware.com/remove-antivirus-360.html

Yep. Before I went back to Oz a while I back I specifically cautioned Mrs. Zak to never install QQ on this PC. She had a <local> friend stay over a few nights, and when I got back, I was furious to see the stupid fing penguin icon on the desktop (obviously forgot to tell the friend).

Uninstalled quick as a flash, ran McAfee to tidy things up. What a relief !

360 runs in the background here, it's installed on all her office PCs, and recommended by the IT guys at her work. Those IT boys are very well-informed geek contractors and wouldn't make sackable stupid mistakes.

I like the auto-updates, but I don't like the Chinese-only menu. Chinese antivirus software for use in China - what a novel idea........

http://www.2-spyware.com/remove-antivirus-360.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 345AAjie62
http://www.xp-vista.com/spyware-removal ... structions

f r i g h t e n i n g

I wrote this coz my bf has bought a nb here. After he removed the 360 software Windows7 stopped working. Ever since it told us that we have to purchase a real version of windows. We went back to the shop and had it reinstalled. Then we removed 360 again and the same thing happened. Now we are waiting to have an English original shipped. Just wanted to share that coz its ohso strange..

OP, the Chinese 360.cn offer only Chinese version. It seems the one you mentioned is not produced by 360.cn. The Chinese 360 works in \program files\360 (not program files\a360. I'm using some products by 360.cn. So far it is working ok. No commerical pop-ups, no recommendation to upgrade to a pro. version. The problem you discribed is more like a compatibility problem.

Kalanstar, the Chinese 360 operates in a different way from QQ. I installed QQ and then uninstalled it. It sucks. But 360 is OK. I'm still using it, and it is not bad at all. In fact, Norton sucks. Too bulky. My system was much slower aftering installing Norton virus.

well my system stopped working after uninstalling it. Its so weird that 360, Rouschin, EsetNod and others arent popular elsewhere and only exsist in China. But I like somehow the diea that software here pays itself through ads, that is cool actually.

^ I haven't heard of Rouschin. I would say that Kaspersky, Pc-cillin, Mcafee and Norton, plus Chinese software Rising, 360 and Kingsoft, are the most popular and well-known anti-virus brands in China. AVG, AVAST, AntVir and Nod32 etc. are less known in China.

Zak101 wrote:YThose IT boys are very well-informed geek contractors and wouldn't make sackable stupid mistakes.

IT guys here don't have clue man! At my company, we have a program that can run in multiple languages. One staff member wanted to run it English and asked the IT guys to change the language. it was running Chinese windows, so the IT guys installed English Windows over top and wiped the guy's hard drive! Idiots. But I shouldn't just say Chinese IT are morons, most countries have many at the same level of expertise in this field.

Here's a tip for all of you: No anti-virus program can detect, prevent, or delete well written viruses! They all have to be taken care of manually! I don't use any anti-virus software, if I get an infection, I hunt it down and destroy it! I use protection against registry changes and data writing to the hard drive.

If you can't delete a troublesome file, try in safe mode. Also search for the file name and extension in Google top get more info. And be sure to scan your registry for all entries containing the file name or related to the infection and delete them.

Norton, Avast, Kapersky etc. all suck, and programs like Norton are just as hard to get rid of as 360. I suggest using SpyBot search and destroy to protect your registry and learn how to identify, track, and destroy viruses yourself!

KalanStar wrote:

Zak101 wrote:YThose IT boys are very well-informed geek contractors and wouldn't make sackable stupid mistakes.

IT guys here don't have clue man! At my company, we have a program that can run in multiple languages. One staff member wanted to run it English and asked the IT guys to change the language. it was running Chinese windows, so the IT guys installed English Windows over top and wiped the guy's hard drive! Idiots. But I shouldn't just say Chinese IT are morons, most countries have many at the same level of expertise in this field.

Here's a tip for all of you: No anti-virus program can detect, prevent, or delete well written viruses! They all have to be taken care of manually! I don't use any anti-virus software, if I get an infection, I hunt it down and destroy it! I use protection against registry changes and data writing to the hard drive.

If you can't delete a troublesome file, try in safe mode. Also search for the file name and extension in Google top get more info. And be sure to scan your registry for all entries containing the file name or related to the infection and delete them.

Norton, Avast, Kapersky etc. all suck, and programs like Norton are just as hard to get rid of as 360. I suggest using SpyBot search and destroy to protect your registry and learn how to identify, track, and destroy viruses yourself!

I second KalanStar: I forget the last time I use an Anti-virus. Have SpyBot and make it a habit to back up critical files on a regular basis.

Havard wrote:^ I haven't heard of Rouschin. I would say that Kaspersky, Pc-cillin, Mcafee and Norton, plus Chinese software Rising, 360 and Kingsoft, are the most popular and well-known anti-virus brands in China. AVG, AVAST, AntVir and Nod32 etc. are less known in China.

Its called ruixing and they pronounce it like Reesheen

360 is a very good spyware/malware scanner.
Beats the hell out of the western ones.

I'm prefer Kaspersky Internet Security

Speaking of mainland antivirus programs, this piece of news cropped up on my Google search.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/241633,ch ... tence.aspx

Just to give you an idea of how the game is played in China.

Reflecting further on this, you can see why compsolutions' words might constitute as the truth. Imagine an unsuspecting western IT world being suddenly crippled by a tidal wave of state-sponsored viruses propagated by antivirus companies in heretofore insignificant, not to mention alien China. This is the stuff for a good hi-tech thriller novel.

Jesus, what am I still doing with all these pieces of crap Avast!, Avira, AVG, Kaspersky bullcrap. I should be installing RuiXing, JinShan, 360, and other programs with no English translation for a more secure future!

360 is run by the guy that used to work for yahoo back in the day (Zhou Hongyi), when yahoo was pimping spyware to all and sundry.

Background:
Yahoo had a toolbar installer 3721/cnsmin which used drive by install methods to install on computers without users permission. It then proceeded to break browsing, and cause the browser to crash.
This was back in 2006 +-

Although he condoned that at the time, he quit to found Qihoo, and decided it was better to help fix computers than break them, and decided to write some spyware removal software.
This didn't go down well with Yahoo when he included their software as spyware in his removal tool.

That led to a large public pissing match between the two companies, when they both decided to counter each other tit for tat. Yahoo's next move was to set 360safe to be automatically removed 360safe when users installed Yahoo Assistant.

This led to a long running public court case which Yahoo lost.
I wrote a long article about it a few years ago, which got published in some german mags.

I think 360 probably see's more traffic than Yahoo does in China these days, so I can safely say that Qihoo won, although that was mostly due to Yahoo being mismanaged to death here.


360Safe is substantially better than the western products available here for protection.
Quite a lot of chinese virus / malware is home grown, and doesn't really propagate as much outside of China. The foreign antivirus vendors are slower on response / detection for this.
There was a recent test of of most major companies a/v products in chinese media, most had about 60% detection rates vs higher detection for 360safe 90something%. Will have to lookup the article, was in the last 2-3 months.

Thats not to say that 360 doesn't have issues, they're still fighting with QQ about their malware^security features.

Mind you, Tencent (QQ) _is_ evil, it's part of NASPERS, which is the big South African Media conglomerate.At least they did well in China..

QQ was originally a clone of the Israeli's ICQ product that originated in South Africa.
Naspers brought it here, and invested in Tencent to pimp it here, and ended up owning one of the largest money making internet firms in China.
Tell that staff that QQ is actually from South Africa, and watch their disbelief.
Its true though.

Some references:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ ... /index.htm
http://www.redherring.com/Home/18033
http://www.chinatechnews.com/2010/11/05 ... et-dispute