(Vanity) BEST free antivirus/security program?

me | 09/03/13 | me

[jeffc]

CNET has good reviews of all such programs, but try to avoid downloading from there, as they wrap everything up in their own installer which carries free gifts of bloatware, adware and such.

Cannot be overstated. DO NOT DL from Cnet. You'll spend hours removing the junk they toss in.

Also, Ccleaner is a good cleanup product. In fact, everything I've tried from Piriform is good - recovered some inadvertently deleted photos from an SM card with Recuva, pretty good stuff.

[fwdude]

I second AVG. It’s saved my skin several times.

[tomkat]

From what I've read in the past couple days re MS's plans for 9 and beyond, Linux is definitely on the horizon (assuming I live that long)    d:^)

Just wish they had a few more flavors to choose from !              

[jeffc]

Or tucows or FileHippo......

[golux]

I have something to say about this. I started using AVIRA some years ago. It’s not well marketed in the States, but it’s free, and it’s kept me clean and clear. (It’s popular in Israel and Europe.)

[Aevery_Freeman]

Another vote for AVAST - started using it when my PC got a virus that got by Microsoft Security Essentials.

[JSteff]

Yes on windows security Essentials is far less intrusive than AVG.
It also seems to have a relatively small footprint.
I used AVG for nearly 11 years and I got sick of it always trying to sell me something. It just got annoying.
Malwarebytes is for the really bad stuff, but none has gotten through since I switched to Security Essentials.
Fingers crossed though.

[JSteff]

What are you running?
I am running 7 and it is coexisting very nicely.

[Revolting cat!]

Unfortunately, free gifts of toolbars, browser extensions, changes to your system and bloatware are the ‘new black’, and have been adopted by many software companies that have free versions of their products, as I have found last week, having to spend hours restoring my system after one careless download. Now IOBit Malware Fighter reminds me with every reboot that there is a new version and directs me to CNET (or download.com which is the same thing), and there is no way to download it pure. Oh yes, the ‘new version’ every week is another trick to tempt you to upgrade to a paid version, and to shower those free gifts on ya.

[Vendome]

What do you have against paying people for their hard work?

Spy-bot for home users. They had been free for a decade and last year decided their work was commercially viable. I used their free version for years and donated $25 each year.

They now have an enterprise grade product with several nifty tools and I think the commercial version is $20 Per computer.

Get the free version for now, if you don’t have the money.

You will need to set certain featured such as when to scan, when to update, sites you want blocked, etc.

Same is true for all AV progs.

F-prot for home users. This product is used by most of the Fortune 500 and many ISP’s. I believe they have a free version. The paid version is $50 and covers up to 5 PC’s.

Malwarebytes for home users. You will need this if you ever get a virus.

CCleaner. We’ll discuss at appropriate time.

Drop all these onto a thumb drive. If an virus, scareware or other rogue orogram leeches onto your PC, you will want access to the programs outside your hard drive.

[Vendome]

Whatever you decide DO NOT choose Norton or Symantec.

They are resource hogs and crap programs. The only reason they are so succesful is the are excellent at managing channel partners.

Other than that, their stuff sucks when stacked against most others.

[Vendome]

Dang man. You’re just cold.

LOL

You do speak the truth.

[arbitrary.squid]

I use Avast. It’s kept me virus-free for over a decade, and I go into some sketchy areas of the Internet.

I definitely would not run more than one anti-virus software at a time. That’s just asking for trouble with them stepping all over each other.

Avast will try and sell you a paid version, but their free version is completely sufficient, in my experience. Also, it’s good to go in and disable most sound notifications for updates and such, and just have it notify you in case of an actual threat.

I’ve been an IT professional for 17 years. There are other fine products that work, but Avast has been my favorite since I found it.

[ansel12]

Avast.

[Paradox]

The Best Free Antivirus for 2013. Personally, I use MSE on most of my computers, it works, its fast, and most of all, its unobtrusive. For my work computer, I use F-secure. Rock solid, probably the best in the business at the moment (is uses the Kaspersky engine, which happens to be one of the best as well).

[ducttape45]

I’ve had the best luck with AVG.

[ducttape45]

You know that's interesting you should mention MS Essentials because that's what I have my laptops, but I don't use them too often and that's why I installed it on both of them. So far I haven't had any problems.

I also have AVG but I use it on my desktops since I use those more often and my AVG licenses are shared between myself and my daughter.

[Fresh Wind]

I just tried out SUPERAntiSpyware earlier today, and you are quite correct, it flushed out some tracking cookies that Malwarebytes never found.

I’m questioning the value of Malwarebytes right now. I ran it earlier today, and it found what it claimed was a virus (actually adware) called “PUP.Optional.InstallCore.A” I deleted it, Malwarebytes said it was gone, but I scanned again and it was still there.

I googled it, and found numerous sites offering dire warnings about what it could do, and advice on how to get rid of it. Most of those sites appeared to have similar or identical content, and wanted me to download a “removal tool” which turned out to be a trial version of an anti-malware program called Spy Hunter. It found loads of “problems”, but it wanted money before it would delete anything.

The manual deletion methods I have seen are so vague that it’s not clear what you’re supposed to do.

SUPERAntiSpyware doesn’t find it.

One site that seemed legitimate even suggested this was one of the “gifts” that Cnet gives you, though I know that’s not where I got it from.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

[reed13k]

for later reference

[atomic_dog]

I find it hard to believe no one has mentioned ClamWIN.