Blink by eEye Security

Blink is a complete computer security product by eEye Security. eEye Security is a corporate security company that is well-known for researching and reporting vulnerabilities in Microsoft products. For some time they have build security appliances and software geared towards corporate customers. They are now pursuing the small business and home user market with their Blink product. I initially heard about the product on Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast interview with Marc Maiffret.

I signed up for the free version that is available for personal use. I installed it on a Windows XP Service Pack 2 computer and registered the product as required. This program follows the convention of other home use security products from McAfee and Norton. This is a not a good thing. Once the program is installed it immediately locks down any access into and out of the computer. It then asks what should have access. It then continues to ask and ask again. This behavior is frustrating and I think counter-productive. Most people get concerned or frustrated and begin to just begin clicking yes or no repeatedly. That does not enhance security and ultimately leaves the computer broken in the eyes of the user.

I could recommend this software for some computer users. Most namely those that do “typical” things with their computer such as kids or casual home users. This software is not intended and should not be used on business computers. Business and power users are going to quickly become frustrated with the many broken abilities when this software locks down the firewall and shared access. I should note that this software is intended by eEye for home users.

The software did uninstall without any caveats. That is more than what can be said for other competing products.

My initial reason for being interested in this software is the way that it uniquely observes behavior of software on your computer. Instead of just having a list of known viruses and spyware, Blink also looks for offending behavior that would not be performed by normal software. I was unable to keep the software long enough to find out how well this worked, because I became frustrated too quickly in trying to use it.

My recommendations for malware and virus protection software remain the same. For home users I recommend AVG anti-virus which is available for free. For protection again malware such as spyware I recommend the free Microsoft Defender. For business users I recommend the McAfee Managed Total Protection.