These days I generally don't trust any security product. They are as much malware themselves as the malware which they claim to protect you from.
- Many security software providers are hackers or ex-hackers... So you're basically paying hackers to protect you from themselves. Why should I trust software which is almost 100% guaranteed to have been written by hackers more than any other random software I might download from the internet which has maybe a less than 1% chance of having been written by a hacker?
- The software security industry is more about selling security products than actually helping to keep people and companies secure. The incentives are to sell peace of mind while keeping systems vulnerable (don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs).
- Most security products capitalize on fear rather than genuine threats (security tools tend to show lots of false positives to draw attention to themselves or to upsell additional software).
There's a distinction between "protection" security software such as antiviruses and VPNs which indeed is an industry filled with scams and conmen, and utility security software such as password managers.
Most of the big name password managers are very good. The only one I'd recommend avoiding is lastpass, and even so they're not that bad, just strictly worse than the others.
Emphasis on big name. 1Password, Bitwarden, keepassx(c), and whatever microsoft's was called.
> Many security software providers are hackers or ex-hackers... So you're basically paying hackers to protect you from themselves. Why should I trust software which is almost 100% guaranteed to have been written by hackers more than any other random software I might download from the internet which has maybe a less than 1% chance of having been written by a hacker?
Because the hackers know how other hackers are going to try to break it. Most developers pay literally no attention to the security of their code.
- Many security software providers are hackers or ex-hackers... So you're basically paying hackers to protect you from themselves. Why should I trust software which is almost 100% guaranteed to have been written by hackers more than any other random software I might download from the internet which has maybe a less than 1% chance of having been written by a hacker?
- The software security industry is more about selling security products than actually helping to keep people and companies secure. The incentives are to sell peace of mind while keeping systems vulnerable (don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs).
- Most security products capitalize on fear rather than genuine threats (security tools tend to show lots of false positives to draw attention to themselves or to upsell additional software).