Best FREE Anti-Virus Software?

As someone that used to work in the industry, AVG and AntiVir/Avira are reasonable choices. As an added word of caution, both are falling behind when it comes to detection of new virii, due to changes in the field of play over the past couple years.


Further, no antivirus in existence is as powerful as some very basic changes to browsing and usage habits. A/V is taken, at best, as a second opinion.

When you stop to think about it, most users have some form of NAT box installed between themselves and their ISP. That actually stops most incoming attacks, where Windows networking is concerned.



Once that's in place, all that's left is limitation of "requested" attack vectors. I'll cover browsing, email, and Second Life, since those seem to be the main vectors here.

One of the best things you can do is move to Firefox with AdBlock and NoScript installed, which has the added bonus of not running all of that value added crap most websites run these days.

Similarly, moving to an alternate mail client that runs things in plain text (RFC-conformant!) is equally wise. Clients like Mozilla Thunderbird perform spectacularly, in this respect (though they don't capture Exchange meeting calendars; I think they're working on that).

And for Second Life browsing -- unless you trust the plot, disable streaming video or patch your QuickTime usage. That's really it.

As a bit of a follow-on post, most software firewalls only provide a marginal degree of protection, which only proves applicable on mobile devices or machines that are already compromised.

It is a MUCH (much, much) better idea to disable things like Windows networking components in services.msc on those mobile devices, as they halt the vast majority of exploitable holes. Windows XP from the factory is actually decent at doing this now; OEM installs aren't.


It goes without saying that if you believe yourself to already be infected, it's best to flatten and reimage your machine than it is to install an add-on firewall product.

But for the paranoid and folks looking at learning just when their computers phone home, I recommend them.

Definitely switch to Firefox if you haven't already. Internet Explorer lets in gajillions of viruses, mainly because that's what people write the viruses for.

LOL

Seriously ...

Yeah,and the funny thing is, IE is technically a much more secure browser. No one exploits the Mozilla holes tho. There are many many more copies of IE running out there to take advantage of and besides, Microsoft is the devil.

Personally, I like Firefox better but we still use IE6 at work.

I use avg (full suite on the laptop, free on the desktop) But also have a hardware firewall/router.

the laptop i take off the network so I slapped extra security on it.

I used avast and others to try them out. I like the AVG suite best, nowhere as bad as it could be on lower end machines when it kicks in but you notice it.

The browser doesn't let virusues in. People looking where they shouldn't does....

i also use Avira, its a very good AV and updates almost daily.

*1 negative point: gives popup after update, you need to close.

.

I have only had resource hog issues with Norton and McAfee. I have used AVG for over a year now, which is why it was the first thing that I looked at. And I have never ever had a false positive from it other than all of them having fits over my Remote Administer installation until I get it put on their ignore list.



Yep




I have Spybot and run it regularly. I have never had a problem that needed HijackThis, though I have been to their site and looked it over - bookmarked in the event that I might ever need their help.

Though I mentioned that I am a believer in open source, I was not wanting or expecting an open source solution on this particular request. The comment was simply made to state that I like supporting open source and free ventures. According to many of the computer magazines and web sites -- the ones by the real techies -- there are truly a lot of good FREE security tools out there.




I do all of this, but I have a daughter that just really prefers IE because that is what she is familiar with. She does not use my PC very often, but I like to be protected in the event that she does something she should not. Additionally, sometimes an overnight guest will use my computer, though I do usually limit that to the spare one that is locked down a lot tighter.