Review

Created: May, 2000

SOS Best Defense

By Mike Oliveiria, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

Which is worse? Being terrorized by hackers breaking into your computer? Or kissing your sanity goodbye, as software designed to keep such intruders out drives you crazy?

SOS Best Defense is supposed to protect against Internet hazards. But its efforts are so badly executed that you're more likely to trash it and take a chance with hackers.

SOS Best Defense tries to keep your kids or employees away from objectionable content on the Internet and will warn you if a hacker tries to alter files on your hard drive. Unfortunately, it can't seem to distinguish a hacker's foul play from your own attempts at saving files.
Say, for example, you download a file off the Web and save it to your desktop. As the download finishes, you're greeting by a female voice warning you of a "vandal alert." In a panic, you read the dialog box -- only to find that the so-called vandal was the file you placed on your desktop.

Hypothetically, this could be useful, since you might be alerted to an intruder messing with your files. But after a few false alarms, you're more likely to just close the application and hope that you're not a hacker's target.

That is, if you could figure out how to disable it. Sure, a hacker would have trouble disabling SOS Best Defense. So will you.

Attempts to stop the misleading alerts went nowhere and the program's documentation wasn't much help. Even worse, there doesn't seem to be a way of exiting the program without forcing it to close without the magic of the control-alt-delete command (holding those keys down at the same time). Nothing in the clumsy interface and option screens offered any help. It appears the only way to get this program to leave you alone is to uninstall the application.

That's not all. The uninstall process is flawed. Upon rebooting, a Windows error message complained of a missing a file. That file belonged to SOS Best Defense. Manual editing had to be done to Windows system files before every trace of the program was eradicated.

But the program isn't all bad. It can help prevent accidental damage to your computer. If there's someone you know who is less than computer savvy, you can give them a special, personalized desktop without icons pointing to critical programs and files that could do damage if accidentally modified. That means you can breathe a little easier while your neophyte uses your computer.

And SOS Best Defense can also filter objectionable content on the Internet. It can help keep children or employees away from Web sites they shouldn't be viewing.
But the filtering won't make everyone happy.

SOS Best Defense believes that the strongest method of blocking Web sites is in keyword filtering. It works by scanning a Web page against a database of disallowed subjects. If a word is found, a dialog box appears, informing the user that the page is blocked.

This system stands in contrast to the style of other programs that blocks specific Web sites completely. The problem? A single word could block an otherwise acceptable Web page.
The database of restricted words can be edited, but that won't always help. Several sites were blocked simply because they had a chat feature on the Web site. A chat line could reduce productivity or be inappropriate for children -- but blocking access to it could also block out a Web site that could be otherwise useful.

SOS Best Defense also includes a virus scanning feature but, overall, its problems can't be ignored. It's a program with a promising list of features but does not deliver on most of them.

Reviewer's rating : 2.5 / 5

Comments: SOS Best Defense does a few things adequately but can't overcome major problems with its interface and functionality.

System requirements: A PC running Windows 95/98/NT, 8 MB of RAM, 8 MB of free hard drive space, Internet access.

More info: http://www.sosbestdefense.com/

Price: $39.99 US, $59.95 Canadian