best free anti virus

[Blue Hills]

MSE gets slated in this review:

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/software/1303828/microsoft-security-essentials/2





Giving away details about yourself on line is 'drawing attention to yourself'. This ranges from having an email address, through on line shopping right up to inviting the world to a party at your place on Facebook and or providing your full bank details with PIN numbers (No one would do that, right?!).

Thanks for the reply but your examples seem to be from opposite ends of the risk spectrum - email address and online shopping I assume you indulge in.

FB and PIN number stuff I would never do.

 

[JoeyB]

I don't bother with AV protection, but for friends and family I normally just recommend MSE and some common sense.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Do Mac owners bother with AV? I've only switched to Mac in the last few months after professionally supporting MS for my whole adult life.

Feels weird not having AV.

 

[JoeyB]

Do Mac owners bother with AV? I've only switched to Mac in the last few months after professionally supporting MS for my whole adult life.

Feels weird not having AV.

Its like the first time you ride a bike without pants.

Whether I'm using PC, Laptop or MacBook Pro I still don't use AV. I think its a case of Microsoft being the popular OS for attack therefore it is more likely you will need AV on an MS machine lol

 

[asterix]

Thanks for the reply but your examples seem to be from opposite ends of the risk spectrum - email address and online shopping I assume you indulge in.

FB and PIN number stuff I would never do.

Yes you are right, that's what I meant by 'ranges'. Range: the area of variation between upper and lower limits on a particular scale. You have to decide how much risk to take and how much you want to spend protecting yourself from risk.

Just over a year ago my password was corrupted on Yahoo, this forum and one or two other places. I was locked out and unable to enter passwords. It required a complete reload of Windows. Some posts were made on this forum in my name in the meantime and I am pleased to say this was picked up by Ianrauk the moderator.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Its like the first time you ride a bike without pants.

Whether I'm using PC, Laptop or MacBook Pro I still don't use AV. I think its a case of Microsoft being the popular OS for attack therefore it is more likely you will need AV on an MS machine lol

Gotcha.

I used two-stage verification wherever possible so I'm reasonably well protected.

 

[MontyVeda]

I'm going to visit my friends' elderly father in a couple of days to 'sort out' his lap top. Harry's in his 80's and and i want to give him a pop-up/script blocker that won't baffle him... can anyone recommend a no-faff pop-up/script blocker?

I use NoScript, but I don't think it's suitable for Harry since it blocks everything and the user allows what they want... ideally something that just runs in the background, doesn't pester the user with 'options' and simply does what it says on the tin.

I'll also give him Spybot and Malware Bytes so he can periodically give it a sweep. Not sure what AV he's using, but may give him Avast AV Free and the Comodo firewall, as they both seem to work well with minimal user input. He just wants to turn his laptop on, surf the web and not be hassled with blocking this or allowing that.

 

[Melonfish]

Could you clarify this/say more? In particular what do you mean by "drawing attention to yourself" - I had the impression that these malicious programs weren't attacking me personally (I'm not that paranoid/vain) but were just automatically seeking out weaknesses.

generally malicious programs are indeed just out to exploit holes, but what i mean by don't draw attention to yourself is basically making waves in internet circles. posting details online (Dating sites are the worst) tbh targetted attacks mostly only happen to internet companies or big named places, make sure you're not a ceo or such of said company and you should be fine, if you are, minimise your internet footprint sharpish hah!
generally as i say we all have anonymity by sheer numbers, it's the zebra defence. there's so many of us it is very hard to target one.

 

[Blue Hills]

I went ahead and installed spybot Melonfish

but then read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spybot_–_Search_&_Destroy

which got me worried so I am afraid I took it off.

When I ran it it did find some tracker cookies but nothing more serious than that.

It did uninstall very cleanly, I'll give it that, and even advised me to undo two groups of changes I'd let it make before progressing with the uninstall.

The first I had sorted but the second I had neglected.

So that was nice of it.

Not sure if the badness referred to is that bad or whether they are just saying it is dangerous to depend on it.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

generally malicious programs are indeed just out to exploit holes, but what i mean by don't draw attention to yourself is basically making waves in internet circles. posting details online (Dating sites are the worst) tbh targetted attacks mostly only happen to internet companies or big named places, make sure you're not a ceo or such of said company and you should be fine, if you are, minimise your internet footprint sharpish hah!
generally as i say we all have anonymity by sheer numbers, it's the zebra defence. there's so many of us it is very hard to target one.

It does happen though! Different context admittedly
Http://lawsie.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/how-i-was-hacked-and-how-justice-was.html

 

[Melonfish]

It does happen though! Different context admittedly
Http://lawsie.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/how-i-was-hacked-and-how-justice-was.html

well there you go, you have an internet presence and you were attacked. there are bored people out there that honestly have nothing better to do than play around with virus codes and hacking tools just to see if they can do stuff. sadly these tools then end up in the hands of idiots.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

well there you go, you have an internet presence and you were attacked. there are bored people out there that honestly have nothing better to do than play around with virus codes and hacking tools just to see if they can do stuff. sadly these tools then end up in the hands of idiots.

Yup! But it's also positive because it does show that these folk do get caught.

 

[Blue Hills]

Been using Avast free for almost a month now on the laptop and all seems well*

Just registered it to stay free - declined the offer for just under £20 to upgrade to the paid version.

Anyone got any views on the merits of the paid version over and above the freebie?

* I won't hold it against Avast that the registration for its free anti-theft app locked me out of my Tablet so that no screen commands at all worked - luckily managed a factory reset to clean the whole thing.

 

[Blue Hills]

Any update on this thread/views on best free AV?

And whether free is good enough?

I'm thinking there may be something better than Avast free and wondering whether it is really up to it.

Somehow I don't find it entirely convincing.

 

[cyberknight]

I'm going to visit my friends' elderly father in a couple of days to 'sort out' his lap top. Harry's in his 80's and and i want to give him a pop-up/script blocker that won't baffle him... can anyone recommend a no-faff pop-up/script blocker?

I use NoScript, but I don't think it's suitable for Harry since it blocks everything and the user allows what they want... ideally something that just runs in the background, doesn't pester the user with 'options' and simply does what it says on the tin.

I'll also give him Spybot and Malware Bytes so he can periodically give it a sweep. Not sure what AV he's using, but may give him Avast AV Free and the Comodo firewall, as they both seem to work well with minimal user input. He just wants to turn his laptop on, surf the web and not be hassled with blocking this or allowing that.

You can use no script without all the allowing stuff, if you disable it in the add ons you get the option to continue running it but block the known nasties without having to allow every site.