Serious Please share you experience with free anti-virus.

[Debonerman]

Okay I understand there's no free lunch. If the provider of the free service wants to covertly check the color of my underwear, it's fine with me. But there must be a limit to the trade off.

Between the two most popular anti-virus programs, AVG and Avast, AVG is by far the most intrusive and indefatigable. If AVG is a man, he would be the unwanted suitor, stalker, all rolled into one. The kind who would want to have sex on the first date! God help our daughters!

You decided that this anti-virus is not for you, good luck trying to check him out. Motherfucker will still keep a spare key to your computer.

Coming back to Avast. After a few months of effective protection, it will start trouble for you by making your web surfing unstable while at the same time peddling programs to clean up your system. Nothing can be done other than to uninstall and reinstalling the program.

What's your experience?

 

[Debonerman]

I've just uninstalled AVG. Took me an hour. Fifteen minutes ago, I installed Avast and I was clicking from one website to another and it feels like I'm driving a Lambo. I know it's not going to last. Would buying the program form them free me from all these hassles?

 

[UltimaOnline]

Even commercial anti-virus programs (eg. Norton anti-virus) give lots of problems, both compatibility problems (ie. with specific software such as game trainers), as well being too resource intensive and slowing down the PC to unacceptable extents.

The only anti-malware program that I've found useful and even worth paying for, is UnHackMe.

http://www.greatis.com/unhackme/

I've given up on (and have uninstalled) all anti-virus programs, and found that UnHackMe alone, though technically an anti-rootkit program rather than an anti-virus program, has been sufficient to keep my PCs free of malware for several years now.

 

[Debonerman]

Oh I forgot! One more thing. AVG will surreptitiously install the secure search browser in collaboration with yahoo. I'm sure it's still in my computer in spite of the uninstallation. Having more than one browser program is bad enough. I don't need even one more.

 

[Debonerman]

Even commercial anti-virus programs (eg. Norton anti-virus) give lots of problems, both compatibility problems (ie. with specific software such as game trainers), as well being too resource intensive and slowing down the PC to unacceptable extents.

The only anti-malware program that I've found useful and even worth paying for, is UnHackMe.

http://www.greatis.com/unhackme/

I've given up on (and have uninstalled) all anti-virus programs, and found that UnHackMe alone, though technically an anti-rootkit program rather than an anti-virus program, has been sufficient to keep my PCs free of malware for several years now.

Don't sabo me or I will be a banshee on your back!.....LOL...Thanks.

 

[JuliaScissors]

Have been on avast for more than 10 years and ok so far. Just need to be careful of not installing other add-ons when it prompts for updates

 

[Debonerman]

Have been on avast for more than 10 years and ok so far. Just need to be careful of not installing other add-ons when it prompts for updates

Can I just decline any suggestions from them?

 

[krafty]

shit works! anti-virus all the same but my avg experience is that it hog down your computer resources, making it slow.

btw, you will also need to install this after your anti-virus fix, Malwarebytes. https://www.malwarebytes.org/

 

[fanta]

Okay I understand there's no free lunch. If the provider of the free service wants to covertly check the color of my underwear, it's fine with me. But there must be a limit to the trade off.

Between the two most popular anti-virus programs, AVG and Avast, AVG is by far the most intrusive and indefatigable. If AVG is a man, he would be the unwanted suitor, stalker, all rolled into one. The kind who would want to have sex on the first date! God help our daughters!

You decided that this anti-virus is not for you, good luck trying to check him out. Motherfucker will still keep a spare key to your computer.

Coming back to Avast. After a few months of effective protection, it will start trouble for you by making your web surfing unstable while at the same time peddling programs to clean up your system. Nothing can be done other than to uninstall and reinstalling the program.

What's your experience?

Not considering Norton and McAfee?? Those two are the major players in the anti-virus market.

 

[Runifyouhaveto]

Not considering Norton and McAfee?? Those two are the major players in the anti-virus market.

I vote for Norton, McAfee is not as good as before. I came across computers attacked by virus and malwares while using some of the famous free anti-virus software. The most ridiculous type messes up your computer account and deny access to many document and image files and demands you to send money to a particular account to unlock the computer (literally blackmailing you).

There is a problem with Norton, it hogs too much computer resources, slowing processes down and needs good amount of RAM. It is very ideal to run Norton if you are using at least Core-i5, 12GB RAM + SSD harddisk, you will not feel much difference. Norton internet security is also not expensive if you buy from SIM LIM.

For enterprise solution, i heard before there's a type of anti-virus solution which combines several anti-virus programs because each brand is good for certain functions.

 

[JHolmesJr]

Deboner, it works but is ineffective against certain usernames.

 

[scroobal]

I have tried everything from Norton, Mc Afee, AVG, Security Essentials etc. Not Avast though. Firstly they all take up a lot of processing and slows down the system, some more than others. Later it became evident that none of them understandably can handle zero day attacks. Even when they are not zero day attacks, some had not updated their attack database. Despite all the measures, I still had to clean and reinstall at least once a year or do some sort of fix. This is despite having paid for some of these programme.

One day I just switched to Apple and all this disappeared. No Anti Malware software, nothing. I have seen only attempt but gone when the browser is closed and restarted, not the PC mind you.

I would recommend at the next opportunity when it is time to upgrade or replace your PC or laptop, switch to Apple. Firstly you do not have to pay for OS upgrade and every upgrade is an opportunity to fix potential holes. Microsoft took this approach with security essentials and it did a good job and better than 3rd party software but for some reason they could not keep up.

The irony is the recent spate of hacking in the US and UK involving major companies where credit card details and personal data were compromised involved hackers going thru the AntiMalware software or intrusion protection of the firewall.. The hackers figured out if you can beat the anti-virus / anti-malware softwares, you can basically have complete freedom of the inside and they were right. These softwares then became the weakest link.

Here is another interesting bit of these softwares. Because there so many types of hacks that every other day you see the software working and you think it is so wonderful. 99% of attacks will be stopped by most such softwares including MS Security Essentials / Defender.

Of course the best category of Malware is one that conceals itself, never disrupts any of your PC activities and actually stops other malware attacks because they control the root. You think the your anti-malware software is doing a sterling job and you tell everyone about it. That trojan will be downloading your details, email address, banking details, password etc .

 

[mojito]

Nobody mention Kaspersky? We all know Russians are good at hacking, just pay them off and sleep soundly. Annual sub is cheaper than a week's petrol bill.

 

[Dark Knight]

Just think about it ..... how does all those Anti-Virus software house make $$$ with their apps?
You'll soon figure out why they are still around after all these years.

 

[virus]

Defender is good and free. I could a blend of Bullguard as vanguard, Karpersky online scan, McAfee webby protection although if you have ESET, it will further protect thunderbird. Quick shot of NPE Norton Power Eraser, Microsoft Safety Scanner to cover vulnerabilities.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

I use AVG on my Samsung mobile and McAfee on my laptop. Thus far no issues. I'm not sure how well they actually protect. I see my laptop booting up normally everyday, no lag, no funny errors, no unexpected behavior, and I will just assume everything is ok.

There was only one time when i had to manually rid my laptop of a zero day worm. The worm was bundled with a free software that was pre-installed on my laptop. I had a case to pursue the seller but i couldn't be bothered. The worm did no dmg and was easily removed by uninstalling the software and editing the windows registry. I also had to remove a malicious DLL file from the systems directory.

Since then my experience has been incredibly lucky compared to some windows users i know

 

[krafty]

I have tried everything from Norton, Mc Afee, AVG, Security Essentials etc. Not Avast though. Firstly they all take up a lot of processing and slows down the system, some more than others. Later it became evident that none of them understandably can handle zero day attacks. Even when they are not zero day attacks, some had not updated their attack database. Despite all the measures, I still had to clean and reinstall at least once a year or do some sort of fix. This is despite having paid for some of these programme.

One day I just switched to Apple and all this disappeared. No Anti Malware software, nothing. I have seen only attempt but gone when the browser is closed and restarted, not the PC mind you.

I would recommend at the next opportunity when it is time to upgrade or replace your PC or laptop, switch to Apple. Firstly you do not have to pay for OS upgrade and every upgrade is an opportunity to fix potential holes. Microsoft took this approach with security essentials and it did a good job and better than 3rd party software but for some reason they could not keep up.

The irony is the recent spate of hacking in the US and UK involving major companies where credit card details and personal data were compromised involved hackers going thru the AntiMalware software or intrusion protection of the firewall.. The hackers figured out if you can beat the anti-virus / anti-malware softwares, you can basically have complete freedom of the inside and they were right. These softwares then became the weakest link.

Here is another interesting bit of these softwares. Because there so many types of hacks that every other day you see the software working and you think it is so wonderful. 99% of attacks will be stopped by most such softwares including MS Security Essentials / Defender.

Of course the best category of Malware is one that conceals itself, never disrupts any of your PC activities and actually stops other malware attacks because they control the root. You think the your anti-malware software is doing a sterling job and you tell everyone about it. That trojan will be downloading your details, email address, banking details, password etc .

i disagree. apple computers are for sissies and not for the real geeks. i have been using windows PCs and it serve me very well. i have fiddled with Macbook more than 10 years ago, there are many 3rd party software that can't be run on apple OS. besides, there are viruses targeted at apple computers, it is just that your OS unable to detect cos' it's a variant of Unix, unix kernel is mono and consists of many different subsystems, one of the virus may be attached to one of the sub and appear unknown to you. that is Mac in my opinion. windows is utilising a hybrid kernel, meaning computing can be processed both ways and more prone to viruses. there are also anti-viruses for Mac computers, highly recommended cos' you know nothing about virus shit for apple OS. adding on to my finding, both osX and windows are written in C# or C++, makes it easier for any malware writer to insert malicious codes in it, i doubt windows and apple will stoop so low cos' i see no need to.


:p

 

[Runifyouhaveto]

hahaha, I was using free Trendmicro when i lost my virginity.

I bet many of our seniors here used it before too.

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

hahaha, I was using free Trendmicro when i lost my virginity.

I bet many of our seniors here used it before too.

I was writing assembly language subroutines for Intel 8086 when I lost my virginity. Good ol' days

 

[Runifyouhaveto]

I was writing assembly language subroutines for Intel 8086 when I lost my virginity. Good ol' days

hahahaha :o