Jump to content

Which antivirus to use


Recommended Posts

I run free avast on all of the time and free Mbam regularly. Nothing has been found for years.

 

Recently, when I ran Mbam it showed 27 items,  mainly pitlocker, when avast had shown none.

 

It was a bit of a shock so I felt I should look for something better.

 

geranium

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • Root Admin

All of the major antivirus vendors do well at detection and removal. 

 

As Java seems to get exploited on a regular basis I advise not using Java if possible but to at least disable java in your web browsers
How do I disable Java in my web browser? - Disable Java

A lot of reading here but if you take the time to read a bit of it you'll see why/how infections and general damage are so easily inflicted on the computer. There is also advice on how to prevent it and keep the system working well. Don't forget about good, solid backups of your data to an external drive that is not connected except when backing up your data. If you leave a backup drive connected and you do get infected it can easily damage, encrypt, delete, or corrupt your backups as well and then you'd lose all data.
Nothing is 100% bulletproof but with a little bit of education you can certainly swing things in your favor.

 
If you're not currently using Malwarebytes PRO then you may want to consider purchasing the product which can also help greatly reduce the risk of a future infection.
 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi, geranium: :)

 

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

I think AdvancedSetup answered your question?

Avast! is a good free anti-virus (AV).

If you search the internet, especially computer security forums, you'll find others as well.

There is no one "perfect" AV for all systems and all users.

However, MBAM PRO is designed and tested to run fine alongside all of them.

But if you ever run into any issues, you can post here at the forum and someone will assist you.

 

Having said all that, it's equally important to employ safe computing practices, as explained in the many links provided by AdvancedSetup in his previous reply >>HERE<<.

 

Thanks!

 

daledoc1

Link to post
Share on other sites

Like mygoose I run free Mbam and free avast.

 

Is there anything better than avast?

 

geranium

 

9uvf34.jpg

 

The AV topic is very diverse in point of views and different experiences and results with one's PC.

 

I posted some of my takes on this in another thread (post #9) at this forum.  The entire thread is a very interesting read.

 

Malware: the blame game..

 

 

All of the major antivirus vendors do well at detection and removal. 

 

As Java seems to get exploited on a regular basis I advise not using Java if possible but to at least disable java in your web browsers

How do I disable Java in my web browser? - Disable Java

A lot of reading here but if you take the time to read a bit of it you'll see why/how infections and general damage are so easily inflicted on the computer. There is also advice on how to prevent it and keep the system working well. Don't forget about good, solid backups of your data to an external drive that is not connected except when backing up your data. If you leave a backup drive connected and you do get infected it can easily damage, encrypt, delete, or corrupt your backups as well and then you'd lose all data.

Nothing is 100% bulletproof but with a little bit of education you can certainly swing things in your favor.

 

If you're not currently using Malwarebytes PRO then you may want to consider purchasing the product which can also help greatly reduce the risk of a future infection.

 

I agree, the Pro version was my choice, primarily due to the availability of the Scheduler and the "flash scan" tools that are included with the Pro version.

 

Thanks for the post about Java.  I've know about the vulnerabilities related to Java updates but I haven't updated Java in a long time.  I haven't had any intrusion problems so I'm thinking about it for now.  I'm wondering if I'm better off not updating Java vs running as is.

 

I opened up the Java Control Panel and my "Securiity" tab doesn't contain the enable/disable info so I looked at the version info and it's an old version.

 

My screencaps are below.

 

 

Hi, geranium: :)

 

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

I think AdvancedSetup answered your question?

Avast! is a good free anti-virus (AV).

If you search the internet, especially computer security forums, you'll find others as well.

There is no one "perfect" AV for all systems and all users.

However, MBAM PRO is designed and tested to run fine alongside all of them.

But if you ever run into any issues, you can post here at the forum and someone will assist you.

 

Having said all that, it's equally important to employ safe computing practices, as explained in the many links provided by AdvancedSetup in his previous reply >>HERE<<.

 

Thanks!

 

daledoc1

 

jv6jbb.jpg

 

I've been running MABM Pro and Norton (360) simultaneously without problems but there's a general consensus among Norton users that it's not recommended to run any two real-time scanner tools at the same time on one's PC.

 

I haven't seen any issues as yet and have been running both of my protection tools in this mode since December '12 .

post-146232-0-14123400-1380805227_thumb.

post-146232-0-03802200-1380805273_thumb.

Link to post
Share on other sites

 

If you only want free then yes avast is probably one of the best ones.

 

I agree, but i've only used 2 Anti-virus software so far...

I've used AVG Free before but i had so many problems with it and when I finally got a trojan it couldnt even get rid of it! So I got Avast Free instead and im quite happy with it! I also use MBAM Free now.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks. Yes I do have to make the decision myself but I am a beginner and need to rely on the experience of others.

 

geranium

 

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

http://www.virusbtn.com/index

http://www.av-test.org/en/home/

 

These are some companies that do regular comparisons. You can get some very detailed comparisons of the various aspects of the programs. For example, av-comparatives.org does tests for real-time scanning detection rates, cleanup rates, false positive rates, heuristic scanning, system performance impact, and many more.

 

As one who has tried just about every anti-virus program out there over the years and watched the top rated choices keep flipping back and forth over the years, I'll just tell you now you'll never find a "best". And if the software you choose now is rated best by one group or another, that's sure to change within a year. That said, all packages are not equal. Some provide great protection while slowing your system down, while others are fast and have great detection rates but lots of false positives. It ends up being very subjective. Which aspects are most important to you will really determine which is the best choice.

 

Here are my opinions of a few I've used fairly extensively:

Kaspersky - Great protection, slows the system down to a noticeable degree when doing certain tasks (clicking through folders on your computer for example has a noticeable delay vs other AVs)

Norton - Good protection, system runs fine, software is too automatic for my liking not giving you much control. All the wives tales of it completely bogging down your system are outdated. It used to, doesn't anymore. I used this for 3 or 4 years until just recently switching to the next one.

Bitdefender - Recently got great scores, so I decided to give it a shot and got a 3 user bundle, 2 year subscription for free after rebate. Been using it for 3-4 months now. No viruses yet, but I get a BUNCH of false positives on windows components every time it does an auto scan. This is an ongoing problem you can see on the message board for years with no resolution.

Eset - Fast. It's been a couple of years since I got it, but it let quite a few things through that Kaspersky and Norton did not on my system. Wasn't as good at removal as K either.

 

There's also usually a roundup or two every year at PC Mag: http://www.pcmag.com/reviews/antivirus

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks and thank you for taking so much trouble. That  is a very great help.

 

I noticed that you did not mention avast?

 

geranium

 

Hi,

 

No trouble at all! :)

 

Oops, I was a little in a hurry to finish the post because of a phone call...

 

I tried AVAST and AVG briefly, but never really considered them for permanent use because they never really received extremely high scores in the comparitives. If I recall correctly, AVAST was a little annoying with the notices to upgrade, but those two I haven't tried in over 3 years.

 

Another one I failed to mention was Avira. I really liked Avira. It was light and super fast and it was a knockout when it came to detection when everything was set to high, but it suffered from a problem of way too many false positives. That and it was quite expensive compared to the others because I never saw it offered free after rebate and the exchange rate to pounds made it worse.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh yeah, forgot Microsoft Security Essentials too...

 

This one I have on my HTPC. It's decent, free, and has fairly good detection rates, but it also doesn't allow you to decline sending data to MS when it finds suspected malware. Since I do a lot of software development myself, I don't really like the idea that it might be sending info to MS about my own programs in development should it, for some odd reason, decide one is suspect. Call me paranoid, but that's why I only use it on the HTPC.

 

One other thing you should look out for when doing comparisons is real-time malware blocking through internet connections. MBAM does a good job of this and blocks a lot of stuff many of these guys miss, but some packages are definitely better/worse than others in this area. Even some don't even offer real-time web protection in their free versions, or some require you buy the total security edition instead of the plain old antivirus edition to get web protection. It's a pretty important vector though, because its by far the easiest way to get malware.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • Root Admin

avast is in the top list of antivirus in detections month after month certainly no legitimate reviews to show otherwise.  If you don't want the nags then I'd recommend paying for the software.   Kaspersky can be slow on the updates and at times can slow processes a bit more than others.  The one thing that Kaspersky has in its favor from my point of view is that IF you get infected by one of the file infector types of infections they are hands down the better tool at dealing with the infection.  I've personally run tests with many of the major antivirus vendors on stuff like Sality and all of them fell on their face for one reason or another trying to clean up the infection on their own except for Kaspersky.  It was able to stop it in its tracks and actually clean it from most files.

 

Ease of use and just set it and forget it - my money is on Norton Internet Security.  I use NIS and MBAM on my own wife's computer and she is not as careful about what she clicks on as I'd like her to be but between the two she has not been infected for over a couple years now.  It's all silent they both update daily and run full time live protection.

 

 

Microsoft Security Essentials allows way too many zero-day and 0-hour infections in and if you're relying on that alone without MBAM Pro then you're certainly not protected well enough.

 

You like avast - BUY IT - it is a good product.

I realize I work for Malwarebytes but for $24.95 and a lifetime license on a product that just keeps getting better and better I don't see how you can go wrong.  I spend more than that on a dinner with me and my wife.  I've actually seen someone recently from 2008 that had purchased a license and it was actually difficult to locate their license because purchase was handled differently back then but he was still covered for the latest version of the program and will continue to be as long as our company is still in business. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks.

 

I was going to buy MBAM Pro anyway and having read all of the excellent comments here I think my anti virus will be bitdefender but not entirely sure whether that will be free or purchased.

 

Good news about Norton. I recall it being a pig to entirely uninstall too.

 

geranium

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks.

 

I was going to buy MBAM Pro anyway and having read all of the excellent comments here I think my anti virus will be bitdefender but not entirely sure whether that will be free or purchased.

 

Good news about Norton. I recall it being a pig to entirely uninstall too.

 

geranium

 

Sent you a PM.

Link to post
Share on other sites

34r63xj.jpg

 

augiem , AdvancedSetup , thanks for your informative posts.

 

That's good to hear you guy's take about Norton.  It's been running good for me since last year.  That's my 3rd AV product on my PC.  This December it'll be 1 year with Norton so I'll give it a "report card" grade after year one.

 

When I was deciding on the next AV choice last December,  I had been running ESET for about 3 years.  As augiem mentioned, his experience was similar to mine.  ESET failed to block attacks on my PC.

 

I considerd BitDefender and almost went with that one but I learned that it wasn't compatible with Office '03 (mainly Outlook concerns) so I chose Norton.

 

AdvancedSetup  ,

 

My nephew sure agrees with your take on MSE.  He was the only one at his company that wasn't running MSE when their server was hit with an intrusion.  He was running BitDefender and wasn't affected by the company-wide hit.

 

 Kaspersky, that's interesting that it rates highly for its cleanup capabilities.  I like to focus on maintaining a HDD backup plan so that I can avoid the time needed to recover my affected HDD vs installing my spare HDD to resume PC use.

 

fygzh2.jpg MBAM for offering that lifetime license service.  That's a rare bonus for e-consumers in the PC-protection scene.  Please pass along this 1427kvk.jpg to your co-workers at MBAM and to you :)
 

 

I'm running ver 1.70.0.1100  Pro . 

 

The only problem that I used to see with MBAM was that I'd occasionally encounter the "Runtime 0" errors.  I read up on that last year and was about to run the patch scripts but since MBAM upgraded months ago, I've seen only 1 occurrence and that was on my Laptop which spends most of the time in Standby (sleep) mode so perhaps that contributed to the one occurrence of the error.

 

Since the upgrade, I've not seen any occurrences of that error on my workhorse Desktop PC.

 

geranium,

 

The best two-cents that I can offer about the overall PC protection idea is to follow the well-posted advice by the other contributing members here in addition to maintaining some kind of a full-HDD backup plan.  That will allow you to avoid spening time on cleanup's after intrusions or depending on your AV to completely clean your HDD after the fact.  It also eliminates the need to spend time searching for other cleanup tools if needed to repair your affected HDD.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
Back to top
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

This site uses cookies - We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.