Best free antiviruses

krncho

krncho

banned
I need to get an antivirus, but I'm thinking of gettin either AVG free, or Avast! Home edition. Which one is better? Also, if you know ones that are better than this one, then please tell me!!! :D
 
Well I use AVG free but I hear that Avast! is also really good. So If I were you I would try each one for a couple of weeks and see which one you like better. :)
 
AVG 7.5 is the main one used here. But the one that will top all three of the ones listed here won't be free. sorry! Trend Micro's PC-cillin also includes a personal firewall as well as adware/spyware removers. The three free versions mentioned are of course AVG, Avast, and the one not named is AntiVir available at http://www.majorgeeks.com/AntiVir_Personal_Edition_7_d955.html

Besides antivirus freewares a few other tools are a plus when trying to keep garbage from polluting your system. The latest one being given the thumbs up is Spyware Terminator for bug hunting and including it's own personal firewall. http://www.spywareterminator.com/

So far that was worked out great with AVG 7.5 and formerly Ewido now AVG Anti-Spyware Remover both found at http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/lng/us/tpl/v5#avg-anti-spyware-free followed by Lavasoft's AdAware SE Personal found at http://www.lavasoft.com
 
It really depends on whether you're willing to open your wallet for a PC security program, or are happy to settle for free programs which will not protect you as well?

There are many independent tests carried out on anti virus/spyware software (e.g. AV Comparatives, Virus.gr, MIRT & Virus Total) and free products such as AVG and Avast consistently appear at the bottom of all tests carried out.

From a personal perspective I would never go back to free protection such as that offered by AVG, Avast, Spybot, Lavasoft, etc. I administor a whole stream of computers which I used to setup using this protection. 2 years ago+ this was fine, but over the last 12months, the amount of maintenance and manual removal of malware has become ridiculous.

I have since moved onto next-generation security software (not that purely reliant on signatures) therefore programs such as Prevx1, Kaspersky and F-Secure have kept my workload down to a minimum.

FREE may be a big selling point, but "you get what you pay for" as they say...
 
Norton and McA"fee" are retail and those are at the bottom of the barrel! The best possible protection is the working familiarity with a good number of firewalls and removers since new "bugs" are always in the works as well as running across some not seen in years that are resurfacing.

One thing recently and finally seen with Internet Explorer is the new antiphising filter now seen in IE 7. This sounds an alarm when a suspicious site copies "something" to your drive as well as blocking invalid sites! Most viruses, malwares, spywares, adwares, trojan downloaders and the like are seen when? when you reach a garbage while browsing online! Rarely an odd email arrives and is flagged when a virus is attached with AVG's email scanner working. Other things that slip by AVG are found by Trend Micro's PC-cillin, or Spyware Teeminator, or Webroot's Spysweeper, or ... the list goes on!
 
PC eye said:
Norton and McA"fee" are retail and those are at the bottom of the barrel!
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I don't necessarilly agree with that - and the independent tests mentioned above will also back that up. Even in the most flattering of tests, AVG and Avast regularly only score circa 90% protection against all known viruses (which means they are letting through ONE in TEN) whereas other programs such as Kaspersky, F-Secure, etc, score in the region of 99.x%. Yes, Norton and McAfee can be resource hungry and I probably wouldn't recommend either without at first trialing and testing the performance on any given PC - but this is not true for all pay-for programs by a long way...

PC eye said:
Other things that slip by AVG are found by Trend Micro's PC-cillin, or Spyware Teeminator, or Webroot's Spysweeper, or ... the list goes on!
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Which was exactly my point.

I don't want to have to go downloading and scanning with 4-5 additional programs on top of my primary protection. This is what I had to do 12months ago when reliant on this software and consumed just about all my time. People have become to think it is the "norm" to need 6 separate programs to keep their systems clean, when in reality it's simply because they are relying on free programs who's ability to protect your PC is lacking.
 
Do you think spending as much as $500 for a retail software for an example will fully cover everything? The idea is being familiar with not necessarily having installed a number of programs. The common complaints seen on Norton and McAfee are numerous from those who have used them! PC-cillin far outdoes both Norton and McAfee and is far less demanding for a retail product.

I use the freewares here as well as beta testing sharewares and never see half the crud just a few data miners from web searches that others do running full retail products. In fact the last virus to come along attached to an odd email was let go intentionally to see what it would do. Thanks to the free version of AVG the exact locations and files infected were detected and removed/overwritten. Even the free version sees an updated database.
 
PC eye said:
Norton and McA"fee" are retail and those are at the bottom of the barrel! The best possible protection is the working familiarity with a good number of firewalls and removers since new "bugs" are always in the works as well as running across some not seen in years that are resurfacing.
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Prob the consumer editions, ive never used them. However, McAfee VirusScan Enterprises is really good. The GUI isnt that good, but it does not use a lot of resources and does well. I lost it in a reinstall and cant get it back from univeristy. I use Avast now.
 
PC eye said:
Do you think spending as much as $500 for a retail software for an example will fully cover everything?
Click to expand...
I would never dream of spending anywhere near the figure of $500 - what products are you thinking of that cost THAT much!? Most decent security programs only cost something like $25-$40 unless of course you wish to go down the route of Symantec or McAfee...

PC eye said:
The common complaints seen on Norton and McAfee are numerous from those who have used them! PC-cillin far outdoes both Norton and McAfee and is far less demanding for a retail product.
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I'd just like to clarify that I'm not defending Norton or McAfee in this situation. Yes, they may have SLIGHTLY better protection than free programs, but the heavy use of system resource is a real killer, and overall they do not offer value-for-money. However, many other pay-for programs do (which offer better protection AND are much cheaper).


My main issue here is when discussing "Mr Average Joe". You and I are likely to be a hell of a lot more knowledgable in the area of computer security than most, therefore we know good internet browsing practice and are able to easily distinguish between something that's genuine or a scam. You only have to take a quick browse of help forums to see people innundated with AntiVermins infections. A couple of months ago it was Virus Burst - before that Spyware Quake, etc, etc. Let's be honest - the public at large are gullible to these frauds.

The amount of computers I had to remove Spyware Quake and Virus Burst from becane infuriating - and guess what? They all had free software such as AVG, Avast, Lavasoft and Spybot. I've sinced moved these people onto decent pay-for programs (at a cost of circa $30) and I've not had a problem from them since, whereas I'm still running around removing Antivermins 3-4 times a week from people running (in my opinion of course) crappy free softwares.

This says it all to me. It's a real world situation from which I have seen a HUGE reduction in my workload, and don't think that is purely by chance.
 
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I've got AVG 7.5! I can't fault it, Well, the ONLY downside I've had so far is that you don't get automatic update, You have to simply right click the icon and click update, other than that it's great! I used to have Norton am I'm so glad I swaped to AVG! It's not a resource hog!
 
Even AVG can let things slip just like Avast, AntiVir, and others. The one thing found with AVG others however was seen when having it totally removed from the startup and services sections in the msconfig utility so no part of it was actively running. It still come to life out of nowhere one day when a trojan was copied to the drive during a phising attack at a new site during a search. It jumped to life to the malicious code in the trojan.

This was during the former IE 6 days when this happened last fall. This is one reason I frequently advise people to go with IE 7 now that the full version is available. The higher default security settings actually veer you away from "garbage" sites! Finally MS has one thing in their favor. You may want to give that a good run as well as getting familiar with different tools. Some of the "uninvited guests" that arrive often need a special remover where the usual freeware and retail protection fails. These are designed to slip right past the best rated programs at times.
 
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