What is the best Anti-Virus program?

[Shane Watson]

The best anti-virus is the one that costs you the most. I shifted a lot and there seems to be trouble in some with everyone.

[jill8beans2]

I have use Cyberdefender for some time and my husband and I both like it. It's easy to use and we've already had it blocked a few viruses. It's great!

[Johansen8]

cyberdefender works great too
the cyberdefender's early threat alert Technology enable the realtime and early updates of the newly found malware.

[sandyandry]

Thank you friends all of you have given a good informations about the anti virus programs,came to know about so many things through this forum thanks once again

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Online money management

[gekkoplus]

AVG + Firefox + Zone Alarm Firewall = Zero virus issues...

[Broken Arrow]

I'd google it. Probably use the keyword terms: best antivirus software, antivirus software, antivirus review, antivirus software review. Just keyword something that will generate an unbiased opinion. Everyone is making money off this type of stuff. Not a whole lot of people to trust. I know one site that is good, just google the keyword toptenreviews. They know their stuff.

Just a quick word about that. When you google generic keywords, some of the links will take you to places that are flagged as known infection sites. Kind of clever really, that malware authors would try to infect someone by masquerading their software as anti-malware software.

Best thing to do is to stick with reliable software. For example, even if Norton is slow, at least you know it's a reliable product. That said, the few antivirus freewares listed in this thread are good.

I don't know anything about toptenreviews though, so I can't comment on that.

AVG + Firefox + Zone Alarm Firewall = Zero virus issues...

This isn't a bad typical set up, but you can still get infected if you are not careful. In fact, to me, this is bare minimum protection that I think everyone should have, and to take it a step further, it should also include software that specializes in spyware and worms (which is a different category of malware than viruses). For example, I used to run Adaware, which I believe is pretty good, and it used to be free (don't know if it still is).

And yet, despite all the precaution that I've taken (and yes I even have a background in InfoSec), none of the above caught something that I actually had once, which didn't turn up until I scanned with yet another specialized piece of anti-keylogging software.... whose name unfortunately escapes me at this time. To this day, I'm still trying to figure how in the world I got infected by that!

But anyway, that was back in the Windows XP days. I know it's not fair to generalize and criticize an entire operating system for one specific piece of malware or incident but... you know what? Screw that. I said bye bye to Windows that same night.

No biggie but Firefox isn't technically anti-malware software, but be sure to comb through and disable anything you don't need. For example, I never use java and I disable all the specialized functions in javascript....

[GirlyChick]

I love the free virus scan by TrendMicro called HouseCall. You can get there by googleing housecall, it's the first result that comes up I believe. It works great, deletes viruses, worms cookes, etc and it's free.

[spicy14lingo]

I'd say thanks to the 24 hr assistance not to mention the ease of useage Cyberdefender is by far the best!

[Aleta]

Always check out cnet.com. They have a lot of reviews of free downloads.

[atomicrc11]

Anyone who has Comcast can get protection for free with the Comcast security suite which offers protection from McAfee.

[Broken Arrow]

If you're super serious about security from malware, I recommend a light-weight Linux live-CD such as Puppy Linux (I think the latest version right now is puppy-4.2-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey.iso.

Download and burn to a CD-R. Then restart the computer and make sure it can boot from your CD drive.

It runs directly off the CD, it's generally fast and friendly (but quirky if not wonky), and you will also want a flash drive to save your settings, which will include setting up the network.

Networking shouldn't be tough, as most of the time, especially on wired connection involves just clicking a few buttons, and asking for DHCP.

After that, you're online, and no (remote) malware in the universe can corrupt your CD-R. Well, maybe your flash drive, but that's about it.

The only downside is that CDs are kind of slow to start up. That's why a light weight distro works better, since they tend to be faster, and Puppy is one of the more popular light-weight live distros. Anyways, just thought that I throw it out there.

Just a final thought, but I think Google should make their Chrome OS available live as well. Google, I hope you're listening!

[myrdale]

I love AVG. Used the free version for a long time. When I built my new computer I installed XP 64, I had to purchase the paid version. The free version works great.

I used the free version on my lap top at work for a long time. Every now and then, like twice a year, I would get a message that I was using the free version on a network and it would want me to get the paid version.

Since then our IT guy installed Norton. I hate it. Slows my system way down.

[sofocused978]

I have been using AVG for a couple years now with no complaints what so ever. Free and stable software. I have combined that with Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad Aware, and use Firefox with Adblock for browsing. I feel very secure.