Anti Virus Programs

[air of honesty]

I use:

AVG7 Free
Spyware Guard
Spybot Search & Destroy beta 1.4
Spyware Blaster (helps stop Active X installs)
Adaware SE
Microsoft Antispyware beta
Cookie Wall to manage cookies

Run thru the online scanners regularly:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/
http://security.symantec.com/ssc/vc_...m&plfid=23&pkj
=SDQDZIAZIGAKIYLPMJS
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/license.php
http://www.pcpitstop.com/freescan/Fr..._EULA_Page.asp

That a few things besides. With all that I still caught a script attack that cratered my machine last week. You can't be too careful these days. The arseholes are twisted, but brilliant sob's.

[Nevada]

Thank you very much. Your input has all be great.

I will be doing another year with McAfee. I did run SpyDoctor last month and discover so adware and other things I did not want. I will also ad SypBot to my protection collection.

[bb]

I'll seventh the motion behind AVG.

Also run zonealarm on local computer along with Spybot S&D all sitting behind a Smoothwall firewall.

[framehvac]

I was told that most virus were made to go against microsoft if so what is a good company to go with?

[condenseddave]

I use Panda.

For you guys running MacAfee or Norton, try out Panda. You'll be surprised at how many viruses are on your comuters right now that neither one of those can spot.

There is a thread on the "wall" about this, and there is some serious info there.

That thread is located HERE and there are some really sharp computer guys that have replied to this thread. I read the whole thing through and decided to keep Panda.

It costs twice what MacAfee and Norton do, but I am TROUBLE-FREE here.

[me4get]

Etrust Armor LE
Firewall and AntiVirus
Free

http://store.ca.com/dr/v2/ec_main.en...715&CID=179825

[Edited by me4get on 01-15-2005 at 10:13 PM]

[osiyo]

Originally posted by nevada

This post is to see what Anti-Virus programs members here use and recommend. I have been using McAfee for three years now. I think it is great, but I don't have anything to compare it with. My annual subsciption ($34.99)is due on the 21st and I am interested in hearing how you feel about what you are using.

Well, on my home computers, I use AVG. The laptop I use for work, tho mine, has McAfee. It's required by our IT guys for me to be able to log into the company network. The company uses McAfee. And, frankly, it's the one I see most often on our customers' computers. Talking about a lot of sizeable companies and corporations. The IT guys at the company tell me Norton is okay, but comes with excess overhead, uses too many resources, etc.

In any event, I just wanted to comment that no matter what you use, somebody WILL get thru, sooner or later. I've been banging away on personal computers since the early 80's, know more than a little bit about em, I'm careful, etc. Doesn't matter, I manage to pick up a virus every couple years or so.

Same with our company system. We have hired IT "professionals" ... at least that's their claim and they're all too ready to point to various diplomas, certificates, and such on the wall to remind you of that. But the company system gets zapped about once every 6 months. Despite everything those guys can think of to do to prevent it.

For that matter, I routinely hear about all sorts of companies and corporations getting blindsided and zapped by a bug, on a routine basis, even top notch specialists in computer systems and protection.

So I just wanted to mention something not mentioned so far ... backup, backup, backup. Regularly backing up your system is one of the smartest things you can do.

Because sooner or later, a virus will get yah. Or, your hardrive will simply roll over and play dead cockroach. Or, as happened to me a couple months ago, motherboard itself finally decided it didn't want to play any more.

An out of state friend was in town and visiting. He gave me his sympathy, and asked, "Now what?" <G> I went down to the basement where I keep spares. I have piles of stuff folks throw out. Talking about business customers. Grabbed an old system that was a freebie from some computer networking consulting company we did a job for. They'd just upgraded some units. I asked guy what they were doing with the old stuff they were piling up on the shipping dock. "Trash" was his answer. I said "Whoa !" and chatted it up with him. I don't play video games or watch live streaming video over the net, etc. Don't have any need for the latest and greatest. Picked thru the pile and claimed older but still perfectly good unit.

Anyway friend watched as I yanked out this and that part, mixed and matched. Kept my old tower case as it is huge and yah can tuck away most anything into it. Plus it's got power enough for anything you'd want. Then I broke out big plastic case meant to hold CDs. It'll hold 50. Flipped thru them. Pulled out an original of Win 98SE. My personal preference. Also have originals for XP, Win95, and most things in between. Loaded it. Loaded the Win98SE Unofficial Upgrade Pack CD. Etc, etc. Microsoft Office, Vision, AutoCad, and a bunch of others. Figured I might as well do new, clean installs.

Then copied over from my inhouse network, from another hard drive in another computer, the mirrored image of my work and data files. I make it a habit to copy such routinely. Plus, maybe once a month, I'll write all to a CD and put it on file.

My point is, ALL virus guard programs fail time to time. And hardware fails. Backup important stuff. And keep original CDs where yah can find em.

Last time a virus snuck thru at work, I gave those IT guys a hard time. But in truth, they'd done their job. Damage was done. But they managed to finally stop it, locate virus and kill it. Then spent rest of day and all night going thru network servers and individual desktops and laptops and get backup data restored.

Just a thought.

[drivewizard]

Never used an anti-virus program, never had a virus either. Knock on wood. Just carefull about the e-mails I open.
Have got friends who get them all the time though, and spend big bucks fixing, and they have all the anti stuff

[The Penguin]

Gotta go with Avg and zone alarm pro and ad aware and spybot.
norton is like a big bloated whale that hogs sys resources and is expensive to boot.
I also do backups regulary to a maxtor external partitioned 160 gig hard drive and my comps internal 160 gig HD is partitioned so if I have to reinstall the OS it won't destroy the data

[air of honesty]

Originally posted by drivewizard
Never used an anti-virus program, never had a virus either. Knock on wood. Just carefull about the e-mails I open.
Have got friends who get them all the time though, and spend big bucks fixing, and they have all the anti stuff

That won't cut it these days. Just because your system isn't acting up doesn't mean some real bad stuff is operating in there.

At a minimum you ought to download, update and run Spybot and Adaware, and run through a few of the online scanners.

The reason your friends are always fixing things is probably because they discovered that they were there...

[sigma]

Originally posted by me75006
AVG antivirus.

I wander what do they gain by giving away free
antivirus software?
Is there a catch?

[The Penguin]

the idea is to gain market share by getting installed on machines, proving that you program is good and slowely getting the market to understand that you have a great product worth getting the upgrade version. It worked for me I paid for Zonealarm pro

besides I like avg its faster than norton and it is a lighter program to run and uases less resources to work.
I have it checking incomming and outgoing email and up loads and down loads.

I will eventually pay for the professional version as I am gettting my moneys worth