ECN Forum Forums Technical Discussion Re: Computers and the Internet Anti-Virus Software?.

Not sure if this topic has been posted here or not?.
But I am due to run out of AV protection in a few weeks and I was wondering what route I should take in getting more (better) protection for my money.
There are plenty of Brands around, but do you really get what you pay for?.
I use Nortons AV + Symantec Live Update, but is there a better system?.
Please let us know!.

Upgrading to Norton Systemworks brings in a suite of additional utility.

I have been extremely pleased with Symantec.

I dumped Symantec a while back because it is such a resource hog. Most of the utilities are in the standard windows software as well. I am using Avg for virus protection. It's free for a single unit license.

Norton has been a dependable friend for years. I usually renew my subscription for about 3 years and then buy the latest version which includes a free year. One advantage to buying one of the Big Two is the speed and completeness of the definitions updates. I have a DSL line and can pretty much ignore the virus software most of the time. It updates itself and looks at everything comming in.

If you are looking for something free, check out www.free-AV.com. Out IT guy said this is a good free one.

Rick

Norton AV is one of the best. But, a good free one can be found at http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

This was recommended on TechTV - The screen savers.

Hey Rick,
I downloaded the Software for the AV Protection and I have had no problems since,
Thanks a heap mate!.

Hello you nice people! I know this two: www.avast.com and www.pandasoftware.com this two both are online, hor how to say keeps watching the internet pages and e-mailes, don't forget to choose not the typical, cause sometimes the e-mail control is not checked! Anyway it doesn't matter which av U use, the main thing is to update it and watch pages like http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/virus-news/ if you hear something in the news.

[This message has been edited by Gloria (edited 05-06-2004).]

Hey, good morning y'all nice people! I got a mail yesterday, the subject was (Spam) re: document, the mail was
+++ No virus found
+++ Pandasoft AntiVirus
The attachment:
document.zip.
I know, I know, but this is pretty nice that they had wrote this little line that it is no virus. Anyway, I opened it and a prompt came up saying virus in the attachment. Avast works fine. The sender does not exist.

There is a category of software pests that, in my opinion, are worse than viruses. Known variously as adware, spyware, or malware (some would argue a difference between them), these are generally professionally written by a software development company specifically to burrow into your computer and send information about you back to the distributor of the spyware.

They are often harder to get rid of than a virus. Some have several pieces, the components are deceptively named, they self-repair if you delete just a part of them, and often will change their own file or registry entry characteristics, all in an attempt to prevent removal.

They are imbedded in freeware and shareware programs, which is the main way they are promulgated.

They will interfere with performance by using your network connection without your knowledge, preventing other programs from using the Internet at those times.

Most of these programs are perfectly legal, believe it or not.

If you browse the Internet, you probably have some of this stuff right now. You can download free programs like AdAware or SpyBot to see. Be sure to update them, just like virus software, every time you run them.

I also use Norton, but I wanted to add that I am very surprised that no one here uses MaCafee. Does anyone use it? Thought that MaCafee and Norton were number #1 and #2 in popularity.

I just reformatted my computer (upgraded a model) and low and behold within 4 days the speed was getting slower and also freezing was happening when switching windows. I ran ad aware twice last night found some stuff but the performance did not improve. Downloaded spy bot search and destroy it found some major spy ware. this took about 30 minutes to run. Then another 30 minutes to (fix) my comp. ( I hate XP HEHE)
All seems fine now

is it worth getting firewall protection as well as anti virus? (i to use norton)

James (Jim),

Firewall protection is not that critical if you are using a dial up connection, as your PC's exposure to the nasties of the Internet are limited to the times you are actually online.

If you have an 'always-on' broadband connection I would highly recommend it. With most broadband connections your PC is exposed to the port scans and port probes that the script kiddies do twenty four hours a day. They are looking for open ports or other vulnerabilities to exploit on your PC.
The free Zone Alarm firewall ( http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp ) is just fine for most people. Easy to download and install.

Routers are another option. A very strong one too I might add. I won't go into a lengthy tirade here about routers unless someone asks me to. They are excellent at stopping unwanted inbound traffic, but they do nothing to stop unwanted outbound traffic. The plus side is they don't reside in your PC's memory taking up precious space.

Here is another useful link. Steve Gibson is a world renown computer security specialist. Follow the link below to his "Shield Up!" test page to have your machine tested for open ports and other vulnerabilities. It's interesting what you might find out!

https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2


[This message has been edited by Mean Gene (edited 06-10-2004).]

Another nice thing about a router (such as a DSL Router) is that you can very easily connect multiple computers to it and share your internet connection. Basically it acts as a peer-to-peer network, allowing you to share disk space, printers, etc as well.

Radar

Ryan,

I use it and have for years. I've had some weird problems because of it but have continued to use it.

(one version made my clock run slow!)
Recently I upgraded from ver. 6 to ver. 8, but because of some conflicts with Eudora, (my Email program) I had to go backwards to ver. 7. BTW, I did check into my problems with McAfee tech support and found out that other people had the same problem. They offered a ver. 7 download to whoever wanted it.

Bill

http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/bagle_at.shtml

"Bagle.AT arrives in email as a packed executable. Bagle.AT can also spread with a prepended Windows Control Panel Applet (CPL) stub (see info below).

If system date is Apr 25th, 2006 the worm uninstalls itself from the infected system by deleting its startup key in the Registry and terminating its own process.

This worm uses several different icons for the attachments it sends, such as these: "

I have Kapersky on several of the machines at work and at home, some at work are running Norton Anti-Virus, and the kid's computer at home has Panda. Used to run McAfee, but had problems that wouldn't go away, but partly due I think to some of the apps I run here. Kapersky is one of the best around, not easy to set up, but updates available usually 2 times a day.