AOL Tech Fortress (aka AppGuard)

[FlyingPenguin]

Serviced a client's PC the other day. PC belonged to his Dad who is very much a PC noob and is still using AOL (sigh!).

ANYWAY, when I started cleaning out some of the minor adware on the system, my utilities kept getting blocked by an AOL program he had installed called "AOL Tech Fortress" which is made by AppGuard. I wasn't familiar with AppGuard but it seems to be an aggressively pro-active security product that doesn't use AV signatures. Instead it looks for suspicious behavior. It blacklists just about EVERYTHING except normal Windows operations and then nags you to approve anything out of the ordinary.

I could temporarily disable it and then use my tools, but I was rather impressed with how much it restricted me when it was on.

Now I have to say that while this guy had a few minor adware (which AppGuard obviously didn't prevent), he didn't have anything really bad on his system, and from his browsing history and the number of malware/adware installers he had in his download folder, I have to assume that if it wasn't for AppGuard, this PC would have been infested to overflowing with crap.

When I researched this I found out you get this for free with an AOL subscription (SUBSCRIPTION!?) or a monthly fee. Yeah. Looks like AOL is selling subscriptions to non-techies now, that provides a bunch of services like anti-virus, identity theft protection, etc: https://productcentral.aol.com/?ncid=tx ... or00000256

Here's the info on AOL Tech Fortress for $3.99 a month. Maybe it's worth it for a total pc-noob like this guy's dad? Or better yet, maybe just buy a Chromebook instead.
https://productcentral.aol.com/products ... or00000256

Looks like AOL Tech Fortress is a dumbed down version of AppGuard which is reviewed here: http://www.promo2day.com/showthread.php ... &pid=43526

[normalicy]

Interesting. I know quite a few people who could use this.