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Who can recommend a very good antivirus app?

OP
CustomSurfaceP2
Thanks all, I will be trying out ADW and Avast together today, hopefully I don't get too many popups from the system tray. The biggest worry that I have is these AV programs hogging up my RAM while it's running in the background, but I guess it's better than having a virus. :)
 

DanL

Member
That's what I was thinking.
I wouldn't trust any "scan" that only took 49 seconds.


SurfRight, the maker of HitmanPro is a partner of both Kaspersky and Bitdefender. Pretty reputable names in the industry. The IT department for the company I work for uses it to clean laptops that come in trashed from malware.

If you have time, visit "Wilders Security Forums". There are a lot of members from the computer security industry that have good things to say about it.
It takes about 4 to 5 minutes to scan my desktop.
 

ctitanic

Well-Known Member
If your have already installed any other Antivirus you may want to disable Windows Defender to avoid impacting your performance by having two services scamming all your activities. To do that in the run command type gpedit.msc, look for Administrative Templates, Windows components, Windows Defender.

View attachment 2442
 
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ctitanic

Well-Known Member
I've been using AVG Free Version since it first launched in oh 2003ish? It's all I use. I've never gone back to Norton/McAfee since. Between AVG and using good computer practices, I haven't had a virus in years.
what happens when the AVG trial ends?
 

kozak79

Active Member
I use Windows Defender and along with Chrome with extensions like "Ad Block" and "Ghostery" I haven't had any virus or malware in years.
 

GoodBytes

Well-Known Member
Here is the thing, you have to choose:
-> Aggressive, resource hungry anti-virus (reduce system performance), for the best protection, and live in a world of false positives.

-> Light weight anti-virus, feels like you have nothing running, but doesn't give you the best protection.

You can't have both. You can try to be close, but there is no solution.

The BEST solution, is safe web surfing practices. Virus and malware don't magically appear... well they can, but its actually insanely rare.

What are safe web surfing practices,m and good practices in general?
-> Know what you are download... and I mean, KNOW what you download.

-> Know WHERE you download. Example: You want to download Firefox, be sure to get it from Mozilla official web site, not some other site.

-> Know the attachment of e-mail, before opening them. It's from who? Do you know this person? What type of file is it? Is your email provider marked it as a potentially harmful file?

-> If you open an image file, or video file, or whatnot, and Windows tells you that this file wants elevated privileges to access system files (User Account Control dialog box), you know that something is wrong. Why would such file needs such level. It should ring bells telling you that there is a virus or malware trying to affect your system. If you are the type of person going "yea yea, whatever, next next next, continue, OK, OK", on everything you see, and you don't read things... well too bad for you.
And anti-virus, even an aggressive one, will help you so much.


Keep also in mind that an anti-virus software is about PREVENTION, not fixing. If you are effected, the Anti-virus can remove the virus or malware from your system. BUT any modification it has done to the system files, are permanent. The real fix for when you have an infection is a full wipe, and re-install of Windows. Opened security holes will remain open after the removal of the virus and malware.

A new type of attacks
Virus and malware makers, are seeing a reduction in benefits from making them. Not only they are now very hard to make. They don't bring much money in. or any value (make your computer part of an attack group which will be executed at some point in time, or such). Bit-coin crunching is valuable, but usually, the system infected, are not powerful enough, to handle the task, so it takes too much time to process.

A new area of malware, is ransom-ware. Programs that can't be stop as they work and act like a normal program on your system, but what it does is that it takes all your personal files, and encrypts them with a generated encryption key, using a sophisticated open source encryption system which would take years on end to decrypt with the fastest computer money can buy, and ask you to send them money in some fashion, for the program to decrypt the files (hopefully). The program is also on a timer base, where it give you a certain amount of minutes or hour or so, to decide if you want to make the transaction, else, it will delete the generated key. This is to prevent (well make it hard) for you to start decoding the process memory space and discover the generated key for yourself. Some of these programs look at the country defined in your sytsem configuration, and displays a picture of that your area upper police force, like the FBI, or RCMP.

Malwarebytes, or your favorite anti-virus won't help you against them.
Frequent backups, and know what goes in and out of your system, is key to avoid them.

Even Brian Dye, Symantec's senior vice president, says that Anti-virus are essentially dead:
http://arstechnica.com/security/201...antec-declares-av-dead-and-doomed-to-failure/
 

EMINENT

Active Member
Defender? He wants to get RID of viruses :)

I use AVAST Premier ( paid version ) and have for some years now.
Works really well and they do have a FREE version.

AVAST is on all my computers and tablets.


Same here. Avast is free, it's lightweight and it's super easy to use. But I agree with the above, it's not fool proof. Know what you're clicking on and be aware of the risks with what and where you download.
 

bluegrass

Well-Known Member
Can someone recommend a very good antivirus application that is not intrusive? I did a scan yesterday using a free app and found a bunch of Malwares in my comp, although none are threatening to the point of formatting, it still bothers me that I now have to get rid of them..

I don't believe there is any reason to purchase another antivius when Microsoft gives one with the Surface for free. I like to add Malwarebytes and scan with it every couple weeks. I just purchased the premium version for $24 to give some extra protection.

My ex, who is also a micro support specialists gave me a heads up a few years ago on a product at ninite.com. It allows you to install or update a lot of various apps without the pain of watching for those sneaky add ins that so much software comes. It completely bypasses all the extras and just installs the latest version of the app, hassle free. I use it every time I build or rebuild a new Windows computer where I work.
 
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