Best Antivirus?

[liquidsound]

Avila + Comodo and since then never got a problem. NEVER!

Dude, drinking and posting is not a good idea!

Then stop doing it

NOD32 for me was a bad experience and the only time I had to reset my laptop due to a bad intrusion etc.
Just use a Standard user to surf the web.

[codec_spurt]

Avila + Comodo and since then never got a problem. NEVER!

Dude, drinking and posting is not a good idea!

Then stop doing it

NOD32 for me was a bad experience and the only time I had to reset my laptop due to a bad intrusion etc.
Just use a Standard user to surf the web.

I'll try .


No one AV is perfect for everyone with how they use their system, it might just not be compatible. And then the worst thing is if it works perfectly and they trust it too much. Accidents happen. Whoopsy, I just need to go to the toilet a second ..

Where was I ?

Ah yes.

For someone with a proper hardened system, MSE would be enough, over kill even.


Look, if it's free and it doesn't cause a performance impediment and it is compatible, then go for it.

My Presonus Studio One will not start if I have Comodo AV running. Did I waste a week of my life asking them about this or did I just work it out myself?

That's right.


I like being paranoid, I never get viruses or malware, I do all my banking in Linux anyway or other serious stuff. It's being silly really but I see it as a challenge, it's a game. Most users don't feel the same way I know. I try to pass off the knowledge I have learnt to help them. I realise most people don't wanna f**k about with this shit. I don't blame them. Some people like Chess...

I like Chess, I'm just no good at it.

Protecting computers however..

[osiris]

Avast and Malwarebytes. I've seen Malwarebytes clean stuff that major players couldn't take out.

[t3toooo]

windows is moaning all the time even if you're not connected to the net.
you need to feed it with fresh definitions.you can disable this option but i don't.

i'm using eset smart security 6 and i think it is really good.

quiet,lightweight and unobtrusive,along with a good detection rate i think it is worth the money.
i also like the firewall options.

whatsoever,i'm only doing this because i'm so paranoid something could intrude my system and make it weak and unstable.
i take care that i don't have any illegal stuff on my drives and i think particularly windows is very sensitive if something isn't "kosher" on a drive,compared to apple.

i know that a simple torrent install can be enough to be a magnet for malicious code,that's why i can't stand torrent.
cleaned a couple of time the computer of friends and always advertise them to get rid of this shit.
lol,when the start page of internet explorer changes,that's a good indicator something has gone wrong.


i'm fed up and way to lazy to think about high security configurations on windows.
if i want to download something i rather rely on other peoples reviews.

can't say if i really need eset for my occasional software updates but i think this company is doing a good job there.

other than that i'm using linux on a old p4 single core pentium for my internet needs,for my portable needs i have a cheap asus 1005pe and i can use the linux based express gate feature.

[liquidsound]

I just work it out myself?

That's the only way IMO

I do all my banking in Linux

That's not a bad idea actually.

[Brother Charles]

Cool! Thanks a million, CS. I appreciate the encouragement.

Absolutely loving AVAST Internet Security here. I've worked for the past 14 years in IT, if that counts for anything. It's light on system resources, fast, updates regularly, and costs less than most. Now before you think that expensive means good, I invite you to research it. It holds up well. Avast has saved my browser from "drive by" infections very, very often.

The "automatic sandbox" option is always appreciated too. For best results, stay away from internet filth that soils both soul and spirit.

Brother Charles, yes AVAST is one of the major players, whether free or paid. It will work very well for 90 percent of people, even older computers. But sometimes it has incompatibility issues (as do all AV). It is in the top 3 so no wonder if works for you.

And yes, the new sandbox facility that users have been asking for for a long time seems to finally be doing the business. I've been using it off and on, paid and unpaid for about 14 years (have they really been going that long?)..


God bless you Brother Charles. I am a big fan of your reviews btw.


All the best.

[Brother Charles]

Avast and Malwarebytes. I've seen Malwarebytes clean stuff that major players couldn't take out.

True dat! I've used Malwarebytes to remove lots of junk from a large number of car dealership PCs. You know, those guys look all shiny & professional, but you would be surprised at "their goings on" away from the buying public.

[codec_spurt]

If you're one of those boring people like me that follow the security reviews of whatever AV then there are TWO programs they use to test if their system is clean.

One of them is Malwarebytes, the other is Hitman Pro. I own licences for both.

Malwarebytes is for life, Hitman Pro is for a year.

If you have an infection then get something like Comodo Cleaning Essentials.

It won't prevent you from having an infection but it is good to clean it.

So is Super Anti Spyware. But that is best for finding tracking cookies.


If you run everything sandboxed btw you wouldn't need to do this. Sandboxie - it's pretty cheap and very effective.


Avast provides their own sandbox as does Comodo.


I have all those paid. Hitman Pro is probably one of the most powerful as it has an online scanner that uses five different engines. A cloud scanner if you will.

I pay less than 50 dollars a year and have premium protection. Up to date cloud scanner protection from many engines. Far better than paying for an over priced anti-virus that will not protect me.


Then again, my main daw is not connected to the net.

This is just my playing about stuff...

[codec_spurt]

Avast and Malwarebytes. I've seen Malwarebytes clean stuff that major players couldn't take out.

True dat! I've used Malwarebytes to remove lots of junk from a large number of car dealership PCs. You, those guys look all shiny & professional, but you would be surprised at "their goings on" away from the buying public.

You bring up an interesting point.

These guys will deal with 'naughty programs' no problem. They won't ever report, but I will just say, from my own research, they will report certain types of programs as being malware, when they are not, but I am not a liberty to say more here on this forum.

They give generic reports about generic types of malware, not all that malware is bad, but it is flagged by the software developers because it breaks protections, but strictly speaking it is not a security risk.

[Frantz]

If you run everything sandboxed btw you wouldn't need to do this. Sandboxie - it's pretty cheap and very effective.

I ran Sandboxie on Windows XP. It is less effective from Windows 7 onwards. For Windows 7, I have taken the more extreme approach of surfing in Linux running within VMWare. My DAW is on a separate computer.

It is debatable if rootkits can be completely cleaned by things like Malwarebytes. If you are connecting to banking sites, it is probably best to reinstall Windows to be completely safe. Yes, I'm paranoid about security.

[cron]

Quick note that one of things you should do, regardless of which AV you choose, is always keep your Flash player up to date. Each and every virus I've had (and the vast majority my AV has detected on entry) over the last 5 years or so has come from a Flash advert served up by a compromised ad-server on an otherwise legit website. I feel kinda bad for using Ad-Block as I know websites rely on ad traffic to make money, but it's probably as important as my AV software when it comes to protecting my machine. Until that changes...

I used AVG until recently, and Windows Defender (Windows 8 version of Defender is essentially MSE) since I got my new machine 2 months ago.

[Aiynzahev]

Sylenth1 for all the plucky saw stuff. Then Largo for all the wave table stuff.

It's not quite the same but it will get you close enough to be the anti-virus that protects your wallet.

Be warned though it's not fool-proof in my system.

[fateamenabletochange]

I have a good ISP, a Router Firewall, a Modem Firewall, 2 computers with Windows Firewall, one using always up to date IE the other some version or other of Firefox, no browser add ins, plug ins.

About 12 years ago I got a virus after downloading a very small mp3, about 60kb, [gosh, that is small..about the size of a, well, virus] clicked on it to make it 'go', and up came, 'do you want to install a codec to be able to play this file'. Yes I said. How dumb is that.

Since then I take full responsibility for the things I download onto my computer, including of coarse, web pages.
Since taking that responsibility on, I've had no viruses. Been years since I've had any malware detected.

I am also learning to not uncritically accept everything that some peeps on the internet want to teach me.

I have Windows Defender and MalwareBytes, but never left on in real time, I run them updated very occasionally, then close them up for months.
I occasionally run sfc /verifyonly. I also usually have a rough idea of how many files are in the Windows folder, and check from time to time that I don't have many many more.

I sometimes wonder if these horror stories of viruses and hackers aren't just to scar little old ladies and old men and little kids away from using the internet.
To hear some people talk, it is like they imagine a virus as like a wee pac man, with snapping biting jaws munching its way down the Ethernet cable, right into the motherboards nether regions, or some shadowy hacker somehow materializing a virus onto their system using one of those Star Trek type Transporters.

If I did get a virus, it's not like it is the end of the world anyway. Having 2 computers, a [much] older one and a newer one would be some advantage, troubleshoot with the one not infected, and lots of help is a google away if needed.

[codec_spurt]

If you run everything sandboxed btw you wouldn't need to do this. Sandboxie - it's pretty cheap and very effective.

I ran Sandboxie on Windows XP. It is less effective from Windows 7 onwards. For Windows 7, I have taken the more extreme approach of surfing in Linux running within VMWare. My DAW is on a separate computer.

It is debatable if rootkits can be completely cleaned by things like Malwarebytes. If you are connecting to banking sites, it is probably best to reinstall Windows to be completely safe. Yes, I'm paranoid about security.

Well, I run sandboxie in experimental mode on win7. It is debatable whether it is less effective as a whole. I see both sides of the argument, but am too ignorant to draw my own conclusions. It works for me. But of course has its weaknesses. But those major weaknesses exist even on Win32 (taking stuff outside the sandbox for example). You are for more likely to shoot yourself in the foot by doing that rather than any shortcomings in the translation between the Windows API.

I always surf in Linux. No reason not to. It is faster. The Gui is more beautiful (like a mac on steroids). And overall more secure. I use VirtualBox, rather than VMWare. I find that I can run something like Knoppix 7 off a usb stick and it flies when I load up a WinXP VM in VirtualBox. It is all loaded into Ram so that helps I would imagine. Anyway, I have the image on another partition, so that is isolated as well. I have a couple of images actually. One a base install and another a running install, current to my latest programs etc.
I also have Linux installs on different partitions of my HD, a first for me. Just a recent thing. Teething problems, but on the whole working pretty flawlessly. Very happy with it.


Yes, my main DAW is on another computer, with no security, apart from system hardening which is nothing to speak of really. I run every few months a recovery disc from Kaspersky, AVG, Bitdefender etc... They all are excellent and can find things that the others can't.

Everything on that DAW is instant. It is just an overclocked i5 that I have given the specs of many times before in previous posts. I rarely use more than 20-30 percent for a finished project. An i7 would just be TOO fast .



I would never say a rootkit could be cleaned by Malwarebytes. That is just not so. It MIGHT be. But no sane person would ever trust to that. Once you find a rootkit, even reformatting won't help, in some instances. You need to go deeper. That is beyond the scope of this article as they say.

I will just say, if you want to find a Rootkit, you should use Hitman Pro, Malwarebytes and PrevX plus TDSSKiller. Between those four (that are all totally free btw), if you do have a rootkit on your system, well, it MIGHT find it .

Hitman Pro and PrevX will charge you to clean - a years subscriptions actually and very well worth the money. Malwarebytes and Kaspersky TDSSKiller will do it for free regardless.

Other tools take a lot more nouse to use (GMER). And also, don't run those tools in safe mode. You want the full on windows mode where it will be up and begging so to speak. If it's alive, it will be alive in full on windows, and there you can fish the little bugger out.

As for reinstalling windows, it won't help if the Rootkit has hooked into the MBR -

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rootk ... =firefox-a


It is ok. Just be aware of this and you can cure it. If I found one on my system, that is me f**ked. I would have to clone/reinstall all my partitions because the very first sectors of the disk would need to be overwritten. And as we know, windows takes that privilege. For most other users, it would be trivial to do. But just reinstalling windows would not do it.

Then again there are Rootkits that survive re-formats when even the MBR is wiped. I'm still learning about those. Not sure how they work but have a look at this:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=chern ... e&ie=UTF-8


They infect the bios. Been around a while. A true security professional will be able to tell you. I'm just a noob and am totally out of my depth by this point.




As for being paranoid, well this is one of the top 10 security sites on the web with regard to giving you a total overview:

http://www.rationallyparanoid.com/




And please, this is just my limited opinion. If anyone really knows what they are talking about and they think I am talking crap or giving out misinformation, please say. I don't claim to be a professional, just an enthusiast that likes to spread the word. If I said anything suspect, please pull me up on it, however how small.


cheers.

[codec_spurt]

windows is moaning all the time even if you're not connected to the net.
you need to feed it with fresh definitions.you can disable this option but i don't.

i'm using eset smart security 6 and i think it is really good.

quiet,lightweight and unobtrusive,along with a good detection rate i think it is worth the money.
i also like the firewall options.

whatsoever,i'm only doing this because i'm so paranoid something could intrude my system and make it weak and unstable.
i take care that i don't have any illegal stuff on my drives and i think particularly windows is very sensitive if something isn't "kosher" on a drive,compared to apple.

i know that a simple torrent install can be enough to be a magnet for malicious code,that's why i can't stand torrent.
cleaned a couple of time the computer of friends and always advertise them to get rid of this shit.
lol,when the start page of internet explorer changes,that's a good indicator something has gone wrong.


i'm fed up and way to lazy to think about high security configurations on windows.
if i want to download something i rather rely on other peoples reviews.

can't say if i really need eset for my occasional software updates but i think this company is doing a good job there.

other than that i'm using linux on a old p4 single core pentium for my internet needs,for my portable needs i have a cheap asus 1005pe and i can use the linux based express gate feature.

Eset is about as good as it gets. And if you run Linux for Internet, then I would say you are doing fine. Eset run the no.1 computer security forum on the net - Wilderssecurity. If you have an up to date subscription from them then you should be good. Go there and particularly to their sub forum for extra tricks and tips, they will bend over backwards to help you. A truly great community.

You will be 90 percent covered. The stuff I am blahing on about is trying to be 96 percent covered. To be 99 percent covered you would have to be an original nuttah. And no one is 100 percent covered. Ever.

You'll be alright. Good choice. Great software.