I just got a new laptop of my own since my desktop computer seems to have gone to The Great Bit Bucket In The Sky. The desktop has been barely functional for a long time and I have a laptop from work that I do all my playing (and working) on; I don’t worry about AV for it because it’s provided by work (looks like it is running Trend Micro, but I don’t have a choice in the matter).
That long-winded introduction leads up to - what is the current thinking on a good free antivirus program for personal use? I haven’t kept up with what is happening in AV. I am running 64 bit Windows 7 on a Toshiba laptop. I have a 30 day free trial of McAfee Internet Security, but I don’t want to spend money for no reason.
If you use the internet a lot the biggest vector for viruses right now is probably your web browser and its plugins. Making sure that both are always up to date and also disabling unnecessary plugins would reduce your risk substantially. The average user can probably get by with just web browser + flash plugin.
I have been happy with Microsoft Security Essentials since I switched to Windows 7. I also keep Malwarebytes on hand for times when I get nervous, but it has never found anything amiss yet (on my Windows 7 machine - it used to find stuff occasionally when I used XP and McAfee).
Echoing what John H says about browser plugins, I would strongly recommend that you make sure your default PDF reader is not from Adobe, and that you set PDFs to download rather than be read within the browser. One thing I have experienced quite often over the past few years is little PDF files downloading themselves unexpectedly. I am pretty sure that they are malware designed to exploit bugs in Adobe Reader. Because I take the precautions I mentioned (actually I originally did it because I prefer things that way anyway) I have never actually got an infection from them (knock on wood).
I’ve been using Avast for anti-virus, based on recommendations I read here in the past. I use Comodo for firewall, again based on recommendations I’ve read here.
njtt, do you have a recommendation for a non-Adobe PDF reader? I tried using Nitro, but it didn’t render some PDFs correctly.
I switched to MSE when I went to Windows 7. It’s the least intrusive, and the least likely to turn into nagware like most of the other free AV programs.
Just remember to remove your old AVs. I get customers who are having issues downloading stuff or doing stuff on-line, and when we go through their computer, they have 3-4 old and outdated AVs hanging around.
“Oh, but I’m not using them anymore!”
Yeah, but they’re still there and active, which is why you can’t do anything.
One customer had TWELVE anti-virus programs on their computer. Then wondered by the computer was essentially a big brick.
This can be very hard to do. Both Norton and McAfee somehow prevent you from turning them off. I’ve run msconfig, gone to the Startup tab, and unchecked their boxes, only to have them be rechecked as soon as I click Apply. Same for the Services tab.
Maybe someone knows an easier way, but the only way I could figure out how to turn them off was to boot to command line in safe mode, and rename the files that were running so they couldn’t start.
ETA: Maybe they’re such dogs because they’re constantly running, making sure you can’t turn them off.
Making it difficult to remove antivirus software is deliberate on the part of McAfee and Norton. If it was easy to remove or disable them, then malware could do so as well. I know that if you want to remove Norton Anti-Virus software, there is a removal tool available on their website. (I use one of the Norton products, such as Norton 360, on my home computers. The retail package gives you updates for a year, but then renewing it is expensive. So it’s cheaper to uninstall it after a year and buy a new retail copy.)
Well, I use PDFXChange Viewer, which has some rough edges, but has the advantage that it provides free markup tools. I am not familiar with Nitro, but there are lots of free viewers out there now.
It may well be that none of them will render absolutely every PDF exactly the same as Adobe, but that is not the point. I keep Adobe Reader around for the rare occasions when PDFXChange View does not render correctly. The point is that Adobe should not be your default viewer (and, a fortiori, should not be your default browser plugin), so that attack sites cannot automatically load deliberately malformed PDFs into it (which probably will never actually display anything at all, just cause a stack overflow or some such exploit within Adobe reader). If you know what the PDF you are viewing is, and have control of whether or not it is displayed, it is fine to use Adobe. You just don’t want it to be used without your explicit say-so.
I use Avira’s free product (http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus) and have been very happy with it - I used to use Avast (my parents still do) but couldn’t stand the annoyingly loud announcements.
Heh. My wife’s computer would always say “Virus database has been updated.” There’s a setting for that. Turn Silent/Gaming Mode on. I tracked that down pretty quick when I got a new laptop and started using Windows 7 sometimes.
I have a mac at work. They put McAfee on it, required by corporate policy. Then one day one of our in house packages would not work, putting a big crimp on our workflow. After half a day or our internal IT people throwing up their hands and not knowing that to do, I disabled my McAfee and it worked like a charm.
My reward for telling the IT manager that I had discovered what was causing the problem?
Turn it back on right now or you’re fired!
:rolleyes: Yeah, YOU’RE WELCOME for me doing your job for you and figuring it out.
So honestly, I cannot recommend McAfee for the Mac.
I tried to use Foxit Reader. You have to be very careful during the install or it adds a bunch of crap to your system. The whole point behind using something other than Adobe is to get away from all of the bloat, and Foxit seems to want to install its own bloat, which makes me think these guys really just don’t get the point. They seem to think that they can out-pdf Adobe, which is just silly. They want to become the next Adobe, bloat and all, it seems.
After I had a problem (unrelated, but required a disk wipe) I got rid of Foxit and went back to Adobe. Yes, it’s bloated, but at least they are up-front about the bloat and it is industry standard bloat. I’ll take that over sneaky conniving bloat any day.
Foxit’s sneaky way of doing things just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I’ll never use it again.
To be fair, if you are really careful and do a manual install (don’t take the defaults) you can install it relatively bloat free.
They also seem to be answer-bombing the reviews on download sites so that any criticism of their product gets drowned out by fake good reviews. That also makes me want to avoid their products.
I agree, the announcements are really freaking annoying. However, they are pretty simple to turn off. I wouldn’t use that as a reason not to use Avast.
I have caught a virus while using Avast, so it’s not perfect. I am still using it though. It seems about as good as anything else out there.