Anti-virus software

[Wizard46]

Well after all my previous problems, I had to wipe the drive and do a total restore because of a virus. ( Open Cloud ). Recently my desktop had slowed down and started locking up especially on Facebook .

Today I decided to run Malwarebytes again and it found 4 problems:
3 instances of IPH.Trojan.blueinit and 1 Exploit.drop.cfg

I've been running AVG on this computer as it was one of the first things I loaded back on it. WHY didn't AVG catch these.

On my laptop, I'm running AVAST, Anyone have any opinions on these two anti virus programs.

 

[PJ Stough]

I used AVG for quite some time, but have switched to Avira as I believe it works better.  I seen others on here post that they use Microsoft Essentials.

Paul

 

[Ned]

No AV program will catch every bit of malware, nor will any one of the malware scanners find every one.  Your best defense is to not do anything that puts your computer at risk, like opening unexpected attachments in email, making sure that scripting is disabled in your email client, don't click on links if you don't know where they're going, and stay away from web sites that aren't known to be safe.  Do run a decent AV program and keep it up to date, but don't rely on it to keep you 100% safe, only you can do that through your behavior.  Most browsers have addons that can help protect you by disabling scripting for every site unless/until you specifically enable it.  Same for Flash.

 

[seilerbird]

I've been running AVG on this computer as it was one of the first things I loaded back on it. WHY didn't AVG catch these.

This is why I don't use anti-virus software. It is not 100% perfect and it gives you a false sense of security. Facebook is the most dangerous place I have ever found on the Internet. Perhaps you should avoid it for a while and see if you stop getting attacked.

 

[Luca1369]

I used AVG for a long time but switched to Avast because it found problems that AVG couldn't find.  I also like Kaspersky (you must pay for this but you can try it out for 30 days).

 

[diehard]

Kaspersky is absolute garbage.  It's the king of false positives, just to make you think that it's worth anything.  Coincidentally, it finds the most 'problems' when your subscription is about to expire.  "Hey look what I found... by the way, you might want to renew soon!"

AVG has worked great for my desktop and our 4 home laptops, including the one my 14 year old daughter uses.  Mind you, we are all very careful about where we surf and what we do.  The only thing that is close to 100% effective is common sense... if you don't know what you're clicking on and/or opening, it's probably best you don't in the first place.

 

[Luca1369]

Kaspersky is absolute garbage.  It's the king of false positives, just to make you think that it's worth anything.  Coincidentally, it finds the most 'problems' when your subscription is about to expire.

Kaspersky, like some less than ethical commercial products, fudges on how well it works.  I like it because it found something (during the trial period) than AVG and AVAST could not find and fixed a problem for me.  For that one thing I am grateful...it was worth loading the product on my computer for that one reason even though I later deleted it.

Today I use a anti-spyware product called StopZilla, commercial, but it works well.  I'll also stick with AVAST which I believe to be superior to AVG.

 

[BruceinFL]

I tried em all and ended up with Bitdefender.

 

[GR 'Scott' Cundiff]

I uninstalled AVG a couple of years ago and went with Microsoft Security Essentials.  It's free and it gets very high ratings.  Also, it has a fairly small footprint on the computer.

For some reason people think that paid for software is better than free.  When it comes to anti-virus protection I'm quite sure that is incorrect. 

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials

 

[JerArdra]

I/we have had good luck with Norton Antivirus.  We have used it for 25+ years since DOS when it was first released.  They update it several times a week.

I/we have been told several times by Earthlink that they intercepted an email sent to us with a virus and they did not allow it to be delivered to us.

I/we use mail washer to check our mail before we download it.

I/we use the weak Windows XP firewall.

I/we stay away from known dangerous sites like facebook and others.

I/we always install the Microsoft updates.

We are careful as we can be, but nothing is perfect.

Jerry & Ardra

 

[Icemaker]

I uninstalled AVG a couple of years ago and went with Microsoft Security Essentials.  It's free and it gets very high ratings.  Also, it has a fairly small footprint on the computer.

For some reason people think that paid for software is better than free.  When it comes to anti-virus protection I'm quite sure that is incorrect. 

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials

Thank you..I'm giving it a try...