Security Software

[edorajh]

Hi guys,

I'm trying to improve security of my PC. Anyone can recommend some good firewall, antivirus, antispyware software?

I'm a bit lost in all options available. Seems hard to decide on best protection.

Thanks in advance!

Edo

[Guilherme]

Avast! antivirus - http://www.avast.com/

Spybot - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Ad-Aware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

[em99010pepe]

ESET Smart Security http://www.eset.com/beta/

http://www.kaspersky.com/

[IronBits]

AVG Free is most excellent.
Get it from here: http://www.download.com/3000-2239_4-10746390.html
Read about it here: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/us/frt/0
It's what I use for Virus protection.
I use a hardware broadband firewall/router.

[Fozzie]

Antivirus use Avira Antivir, it's free and in recent tests scored better than many retail products, just has a few, but infrequent nag screens. Kaspersky is the best retail.

Spybot search and destroy for adware/malware

Zone Alarm is the most usual free choice for firewalls, but there are others like Ghostwall.

Have fun

[LAURENU2]

And do not forget the most effective one A cut cat 6 cable
I remember a time when we did not need anti V or spy-wear Damm am I that OLD

[Digital Parasite]

Yeah I use AVG which has been fine so far. The firewall built into Windows and Linux also works fine for me.

As for commercial, Consumer Reports seems to think that PC-Cillin is very good and I think that comes with a suite of all the utils you are looking for.

[edorajh]

Thank you guys. Lots of interesting ideas. In the mean time I read in PC Magazine very positive review about Norton Internet Security 2008 edition....
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2180643,00.asp

Anyone use NIS?

[Paratima]

AVG (Grisoft) also has a FREE detector/remover for rootkit thingies.

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

Thank you guys. Lots of interesting ideas. In the mean time I read in PC Magazine very positive review about Norton Internet Security 2008 edition....
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2180643,00.asp

Anyone use NIS?

No offence but erm I steer clear of anything that says "Norton" on it period unless you want your machine to grind to a halt and the like, me personally I'm running Mcafee on this machine only because I know all it's quirks and know when I shut it down it goes off not hangs around in the background hiding oh and it also properly uninstalls in 1 go not 15.... :| I recommend AVG Anti-spyware which is good and Zone Alarm to people who are looking for something..

[Paratima]

I'm with the gopher on this one. Norton has a strong tendency to want to take over your boxen completely. It's nice to be virus-free, but only if you can then convince the machine to do useful things when it's not looking for viruses.

The only way I've found to completely remove Norton from a system is hitting that button labeled FORMAT!

I use EZ-Antivirus from Computer Associates and Zone Alarm. I run Zone Alarm at its most permissive settings, 'cause I'm behind a hardware firewall anyway.

[edorajh]

Thanks guys. I heard similar things for Norton from some of my offline friends.

AVG might be interesting. I just saw AVG Internet Security suite. Has everything. Anyone has some experience with the complete suite?

Will look at PC Cillin as well.

Edo

[Helix_Von_Smelix]

another vote for AVG, and ZoneAlarm

Hate Norton and McAfee.

We use McAfee at the work, it knocks over a laptop a month.

Format, rebuild!!

[IronBits]

I stuck with Peter Norton from the beginning, however, starting last year, or the year before, I noticed the computer was struggling. I also ran into some licensing issues (at least that's what they said) so I formatted and re-installed from scratch without Symantec anything. I purchased and have been using AVG since then and I can tell you that my computer stays much faster than anytime I have had Norton/Symantec running on my computer. The worst thing you can install is that stupid 'go back' crap, that will toast your computer for sure, and yes, the horrible uninstall... they make it so you can't, at least not easily.
I now am an avid AVG/Diskeeper supporter. I also own Perfect Disk 8.0 and prefer Diskeeper over it.
I use a hardware firewall to keep folks out, no software firewall on my computer, including any M$ creations and I use Firefox with Flashblock, Adblock, and script blocker to keep out pesky stuff, keep the ads blocked, and anything that wiggles or moves around on the page that distracts me gets blocked.
Don't forget about the FREE 'gif animation' stopper key when a page has loaded.

[alpha]

Another vote to banish anything Norton straight to hell. I've seen countless systems brought to a crawl by Norton software and it isn't even straightforward to uninstall.

As for everything else, enable the Windows firewall and with a bit of common sense you won't need anything else to "protect" you. I haven't used anti spyware/virus software for years.

[Digital Parasite]

I used to use Norton in the old days but stopped several years ago, it has just gone down hill. Back in the day Norton Utilities was a must-have, now I don't think they are even developing it any more.