Omnimaga
General Discussion => Technology and Development => Computer Usage and Setup Help => Topic started by: squidgetx on August 23, 2011, 03:13:16 pm
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so i'm finally getting my own computer (yay) and it's a pretty ancient one that runs xp (lol)
my question to you guys is, what's the best free virus protection software out there? and is it even needed? and don't tell me to run linux lol (although i am tempted to try it out)
thanks :)
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I'd spring for Avast! (http://www.avast.com/en-us/index) personally.
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Ran in here with a banhammer... Er, if you're on a Mac, Sophos (http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools.aspx) is great. Otherwise, I've heard a lot about Avast.
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I like Avast. Some people like AVG but I don't know if it's available for free anymore.
Some people just don't use any at all, but you must know what you are doing, such as:
-Not torrenting anything else than uncompressed mp3 files
-Avoiding visiting website link sections on old websites that are not maintained regularly, especially French websites.
-Not using IE
But even then you never know if you'll not fall onto a random software download site that seems to have a good reputation in Google but in fact hides viruses.
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Run Linux... <.< j/k you don't have to run it. You're free to try it though. :P
I use Avast! as well. Works great for me.
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Just one thing about Avast. If it's an old computer, sometimes it might cause major slowdowns when Avast is updated (about once, twice or three times per day). I noticed Avast Update was rather CPU-intensive. X.x
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Ad-Aware is a great supplement to another scanner. Malware bytes is an essential tool for removing horrible infections, but not so great for everyday use.
I was going to suggest linux, but since it's already been brought up 3 times I'll refrain. :P
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AVG is a steaming pile of dung. It's malware itself, with its incessant ads for the paid-for version and the extreme effort it takes to completely remove. It also failed to remove half of the virii it detected.
I've used avast and it's at least somewhat decent as far as actually removing virii goes, but like all AV it's a giant resource hog.
These days I only use AV on a "by-need" basis without realtime protection - haven't seen a virus in one and a half years (and that one was a trojan in a keygen - should have known better)
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Strange I never had ads in AVG before. Maybe it's because I had an older version.
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the best virus protection is, obviously, to never use windows or mac. this won't take care of everything, but the vast majority of viruses are exclusive to those two operating systems.
the second best virus protection is to use a well constructed browser with flash blocking and other such abilities enabled. that way you can avoid client side scripting that traps you in endless popup loops or automatically saves and executes things on your computer.
the third best virus protection is to not be stupid in your browsing. don't click links randomly or jump to sites without checking them out beforehand.
the fourth best virus protection is antivirus software. if you take the measures above it really isn't needed, and virus software does take up quite a bit of your computer's resources. if you absolutely cannot go without it, though, then avast is what i would suggest, with malwarebytes for when things may get out of hand.
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Actually, the world's best virus protection is to never allow your computer any communication with anything, in any shape or form. Often unplugging your ethernet cable and disabling your wifi is enough. :P
There's always a balance to security and usability. I like to think Linux shifts that balance far more into usability's favor.
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The issue about being careful what you click is hacked/deleted sites, though.
Eg: a few years ago, I visited a french TI website called TI-Center that I did not visit for a long while. I was global moderator there and I wanted to see if the author was still around. However, when I arrived on the forums and guestbooks, I got infected by malware because the site has been hacked. In such cases it's hard to tell.
I had the same problem happen when I visited WikiTI once, back before BrandonW started hosting it. Yes, viruses on WikiTI.
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the best virus protection is, obviously, to never use windows or mac. this won't take care of everything, but the vast majority of viruses are exclusive to those two operating systems.
Well the only unix virii are not out in the wild, so it does take care of everything other then being stupid and leaving things open yourself with things like ssh etc.
I myself would recommend Avast from experience if you go with windows.
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i went 2 years with out virus protection and never got a virus just by using safe net skills such as avoiding risky sites and such
i personally prefer avg as my antivirus of choice the free version is ok but lacking IMO go with avast for free its much better
also have heard alot about microsoft security essentials or something like that cant remember if it was free or how good it was though :/
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MSE is free and I like it a lot. Lightweight and works better than most paid AntiVirus imo.
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I would recommend avast, I have never had a problem with it before, and never will most likely. Yes, I have used AVG trial, avg internet security paid version, and avg free version. All in all, avg just seems a little bloated to me, being that it is a resource guzzler imo. Avast is light, and it seems to just work more fluently and less heavier than avg. I DO NOT recommend McCafee, my school uses it and its bloated, not seemingly reliable also. I have no opinion on any other anti-virus other than those 3.
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I would recommend avast, I have never had a problem with it before, and never will most likely. Yes, I have used AVG trial, avg internet security paid version, and avg free version. All in all, avg just seems a little bloated to me, being that it is a resource guzzler imo. Avast is light, and it seems to just work more fluently and less heavier than avg. I DO NOT recommend McCafee, my school uses it and its bloated, not seemingly reliable also. I have no opinion on any other anti-virus other than those 3.
I recommend mcaffe and avast ;)
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There's no "best" virus protection. It's impossible to recommend any AV software, because their so-called protection fails in so many ways against so many virus that it isn't funny.
Be sure to avoid paid-for products. The bunch of crooks that the AV software industry is, for selling highly defective products at high price tags and thereby making billions of dollars each year, needs to be hit at the wallet.
Over the years, I've fixed multiple computers that were ridden with virus despite the presence of an up-to-date AV software, whether paid-for or free. I usually ended up detecting the virus manually, by examining the various startup entries, finding files with strange names in select directories, etc.
And after finding the virus, I usually sent it to VirusTotal... the "best" result I got was one third (!!!) of their AV software roster (of 36 and later 42 programs) detecting the virus as such. Sometimes, only one or two AV software pinpointed the virus - and it was usually through heuristic detections (which only means that the virus was not obfuscated well enough...).
And the trend of virus technology is constant evolution towards higher sophistication. Have you read about the Stuxnet attack (whose sophistication shows that it's the work of up to several hundreds of man-months of work !), or rootkits with memory forging capability, just to mention two disturbing trends ?
Nowadays, malware isn't done by amateurs, but by money-motivated criminals (sometimes backed by their governments). And every day, facts show that the AV software industry scam is doing an extremely bad job at "protecting" against such threats....
One last note: keep in mind that security on the one side, and ease of use on the other side, are highly antagonist features. Consumer software is in the "easy to use" category, but therefore, it's in the "insecure" category. Strong hardening (e.g. the huge grsecurity patch to Linux) carries costs in usability and performance.
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use AV on a "by-need" basis without realtime protection
I think I'll go with Avast based on this policy: many of the AV softwares that I've seen are at least able to detect virii when I get them, and that's all I'm expecting (steps for removal: google, then start deleting appropriate registry entries lol)
Thanks for the help guys :) I'm trying to keep it as light as possible so I can actually use it at a decent speed (It's at least 7 years old lol)