PC Security Software

big_b

Well-known member
I've been running Vipre on a few PC's for a few years now without problems.
The license is due to expire in about month but the cost is now the same to cover 1pc for 1yr as what i paid to cover 3 for 3 yrs.
Getting a bit rich for a pensioner
Theres a lot of alternatives which are cheaper ( 3pc / 2yr license )
Any suggestions on what brand name I should be looking at
kaspersky - trend - norton etc

Dave
 
Windows Defender, which comes free with Windows 10, is reckoned by many to be just as effective as the pay ware products (and it's what I am using for now). Otherwise, I suspect there is not a lot to choose among most of them.

In the end, your primary protection is you. Don't click on anything you do not trust and never respond to anything asking for your full user credentials.

John
 
All you really need is free:

Microsoft Security Essentuals
Malwarebytes
Glary Utilities, and their Malware Hunter add on

Some other antivirus like AVG can be extremely intrusive and self delete programs that it painstakingly deems as a threat

I had Norton and Webroot ... all they did was a bunch of spinning animated gifs while working and never actually found anything

CC Cleaner, and the likes, sometimes do more harm, than they do good
 
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I too have had good luck with this and used to run Vipre before. Vipre was great when it was owned by Sunbelt, but a new company owns it now and I had issues with it then where it really beat up on TADDaemon in TS12.

When the issues started with Vipre, I switched to Windows Defender and have had no problems since. The latest version with Windows 10 does an excellent job and I have never had an intrusion of any kind. When I first switched to it, I ran Malwarebytes free to scan manually in addition to the Windows Defender, and Malwarebytes didn't find anything either. I then tried another application, which of course I can't remember the name of at the moment, and that showed everything to be clean as well. Speaking of Windows Defender it needs mentioning you really have to exclude the Trainz folders from real-time scanning because every time a file is opened, the antivirus has to scan it. Exclude the executables and the data folder because this extra overhead causes awful performance problems especially in driver.

As great as Kaspersky is for finding stuff, it's also extremely strict and like AVG will lock or block many things. I had that issue with a work machine --- one of those home-office jobs that someone brought in to work for me to get on the network. They had Kaspersky and that blocked the Nortel VPN client from connecting to the network as well as deleted some proprietary client software needed for a database application. That was the minor side of things. With all the constant scanning, no matter what settings were tried, the machine performance was so bad it made using the machine painful.

Stay away from McAfee - it's cheap pure crap and really kills the machine performance. My brother got one of those Dell tablet/laptops. It's not a bad machine for what he uses it for. When he first unboxed it, it had what appeared to be a mouse/tablet issue. The unit would skip, stutter, and lock up. He was ready to return it because he thought there was a hardware problem but he continued the setup and tweaking anyway, and as always we remove the bundled crapware that comes on these things. When he removed the McAfee and switched to Windows Defender, the performance problem went away. That's one nice machine once rid of McAfee.

AVG is not as good as it was, and they've had some nasty stuff in the news lately which makes me want to stay further from them now. Their free version runs better than their payware version and actually finds more stuff! The payware version has something in it which allows some spyware adware components free reign in the system. People complained and they've done nothing about it. They also got in trouble for selling fake system utilities and have been sued for fraud.

Malwarebytes is not bad and does a good job. I have never used their pay version to know if it's good, bad or worse, however, as an adjunct scanner using their freeware version it's worth considering. If you're ever suspicious of malware activity, run this in addition to your own antivirus as a secondary scanner and see if anything is out of the ordinary.

One more thought on the antivirus/malware and utilities. Don't waste your money on those all-in-one clean-up and performance enhancer programs. They are a total waste of time and can actually make matters worse. If you are concerned about clean-up utilities, run C-Cleaner from Piriform. There's both a payware version and a lite freeware version. Both do a nice job and it's up to you to pick which one you want. The other packages, such as IO-Bit's Advanced System Care come with a lot of overhead with their constant monitoring, and scanning. I ran Advanced System Care for years and removed it recently to find that my machine actually runs better without it than it did when I had it installed.

John
 
I had a natter with a heavy Microsoft security person once, they brought him up from somewhere to talk to the Canadian Federal Government. In ten years he had only seen one Malware exploit that appeared until before Microsoft had patched the operating system.

The CIA have changed things a little but generally speaking its still true.

What the Malware writers do is look at the patches then work out the malware to exploit an unpatched system afterwards. So keeping your patches up to date is important.

Note that patches for Win 10 will cover exploits that were also in XP. So if you're running XP be aware that the new patches for Win 10 show the holes in XP and that means XP is now basically untrustworthy.

I'd go windows defender and Windows updates.

Cheerio John
 
I really can not understand why my PC is not highly infected :o :hehe: I have gotten many notices that my PC has been locked and ransom money is needed to unlock it (which is just total BS) ... all you have to do is use Firefox and press Ctrl+Alt+Del and force the process or application to exit, and shut down (sometime multiple times until the pesky intruder redirect ceases). Where might these pesky Trojans and infections be hiding on my PC, as they are not detectable ?
 
Windows defender here and as stated before you are the greatest risk to your own machine.... I also look at Microsoft with the idea who knows the operating system best, seems like a no brainer on that one.
 
If you Google something on the lines off 'Best Free AntiVirus Software' or similar I think you will discover the reviewers put Microsoft Defender somewhere in the middle of the bunch tested unfortunately there is not really one that comes out constantly on top of all the reviews which would perhaps suggest there isn't a great deal to pick between any of them in respect of their antivirus qualities. As for being resource hungry or intrusive, well to frequently those qualities a poorly addressed. If you are using your computer for Trainz and little else I think you will find Defender does a reasonable job. If you are into social networking then perhaps I'd look a little further and search out a few recent reviews. If you are interested in some very questionable websites then perhaps it would be prudent to get yourself an old basic computer just for browsing and run Linux which is free and can be re-installed from scratch in 30 min should you get infected with anything nasty. In the mean time the following might be a worthy starting point:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-anti-virus-software.htm

Peter
 
I really can not understand why my PC is not highly infected :o :hehe: I have gotten many notices that my PC has been locked and ransom money is needed to unlock it (which is just total BS) ... all you have to do is use Firefox and press Ctrl+Alt+Del and force the process or application to exit, and shut down (sometime multiple times until the pesky intruder redirect ceases). Where might these pesky Trojans and infections be hiding on my PC, as they are not detectable ?

Not quite, the latest Malware will infect your machine by simply visiting a web site that has carefully crafted HTML. You won't notice its arrival. Your disk drive now has some intelligence so write a couple of lines of code and insert them in the Disk drive eprom. US intelligence guys having been doing this for some time. Scan your machine all you want to but its difficult to spot.

Using a user account will prevent many infections by the way. Add an account and browse using that account.

I need one to insert one branch instruction in your code. So using assembler have a look at the operating system. It's rare that something cannot be rewritten to free up enough room for a branch instruction. Once there well the operating system contains all sorts of nooks and crannies to insert a few lines of code.

Key board scanning is easy to do. Add in which web site and that's your banking userid and password gone.

Ransomware messages? There are at least two US police departments who have paid up to unscramble their computer files together with a few hospitals. I make no comment about how computer knowledgeable US police departments are or should be but they are capable of recognising that just rebooting the computer didn't bring their files back.

Cheerio John
 
I had a natter with a heavy Microsoft security person once, they brought him up from somewhere to talk to the Canadian Federal Government. In ten years he had only seen one Malware exploit that appeared until before Microsoft had patched the operating system.

The CIA have changed things a little but generally speaking its still true.

What the Malware writers do is look at the patches then work out the malware to exploit an unpatched system afterwards. So keeping your patches up to date is important.

Note that patches for Win 10 will cover exploits that were also in XP. So if you're running XP be aware that the new patches for Win 10 show the holes in XP and that means XP is now basically untrustworthy.

I'd go windows defender and Windows updates.

Cheerio John

Oh, really?

OS...................................... # of vulns........................ Time on market........................ Proj. #*

Windows XP................................. 727.................................... 13 years........................... 727
Windows Vista............................. 706.................................... 9.8 years.......................... 936
Windows 7.................................. 596................................... 7.25 years....................... 1068
Windows 8/8.1...................... 254/300................................. 4/2.5 years................ 825/1560
Windows 10................................. 166.................................. 14 months....................... 1876

*Projected # of vulns if these OS' were to stay on the market and be supported as long as XP

Courtesy of https://www.cvedetails.com
 
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I've been using the free version of Avast for a number of years and have had no problems with the program. Along with Malwarebytes and Glary Utilities I haven't been infected. I also run Microsoft Safety Scanner each evening before I go to bed, it's free. As stated by others just be careful what you click on.
 
Oh, really?

OS...................................... # of vulns........................ Time on market........................ Proj. #*

Windows XP................................. 727.................................... 13 years........................... 727
Windows Vista............................. 706.................................... 9.8 years.......................... 936
Windows 7.................................. 596................................... 7.25 years....................... 1068
Windows 8/8.1...................... 254/300................................. 4/2.5 years................ 825/1560
Windows 10................................. 166.................................. 14 months....................... 1876

*Projected # of vulns if these OS' were to stay on the market and be supported as long as XP

Courtesy of https://www.cvedetails.com

Sorry I don't understand your comment. XP, vista win 7 win 8 / 8.1 win 10 are all based on the same code. Parts were rewritten a major part of the code was rewritten for Vista and that is when internally Microsoft took all their coders and taught them what to watch for to reduce the number of vulnerabilities. Vista is substantially more malware resistant than XP by design.

However some parts of Win 10 uses the same approach as XP did so when Win 10 is patched the same vulnerability maybe present in XP. XP is no longer patched for security purposes but a vulnerability exposed by the Win 10 patches may also be in XP.

The larger the surface area then the larger the attack surface to be protected. The more complicated the system the more vulnerable it is to attack.

The other question is what is a vulnerability? How serious is it? If it only affects zip drives and you don't have one who cares?

Cheerio John
 
I've been using the free version of Avast for a number of years and have had no problems with the program. Along with Malwarebytes and Glary Utilities I haven't been infected. I also run Microsoft Safety Scanner each evening before I go to bed, it's free. As stated by others just be careful what you click on.

That's the same as I run & I also haven't had any problems in recent memory. I also occasionally run "CCleaner" which seem to do a reasonable job of cleaning out most of the deep crap in my register. (from time to time).

I wouldn't rely solely on something like; Microsoft Security Essentials. After seeing how invasive Windows 10 is firsthand, I've lost all faith will MS...

Cheers, Mac...
 
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Sorry I don't understand your comment. XP, vista win 7 win 8 / 8.1 win 10 are all based on the same code. Parts were rewritten a major part of the code was rewritten for Vista and that is when internally Microsoft took all their coders and taught them what to watch for to reduce the number of vulnerabilities. Vista is substantially more malware resistant than XP by design.

However some parts of Win 10 uses the same approach as XP did so when Win 10 is patched the same vulnerability maybe present in XP. XP is no longer patched for security purposes but a vulnerability exposed by the Win 10 patches may also be in XP.

The larger the surface area then the larger the attack surface to be protected. The more complicated the system the more vulnerable it is to attack.

The other question is what is a vulnerability? How serious is it? If it only affects zip drives and you don't have one who cares?

Cheerio John

They are very different, and the number of OS vulns is increasing drastically with each new release. Nor are newer OS' more vulnerability-resistant, as the numbers demonstrate; indeed, they are far more vulnerable.

With that said, OS vulns are largely a red herring; the high-level apps are the most dangerous. Flash and Java, for example.
 
I have bit defender. It's pretty good. Lots of features, I'll say that! You can do all kinds of scans and all that stuff.
 
Avast is certainly one of the best (and least intrusive) of the freebies for Windows 7 etc. - Interesting to note that it is about to take over/ buy out AVG.
As long as you practice safe computing and have a decent firewall, etc., then Windows Defender is 'good enough' for Windows 10.
 
Have a look at HerdProtect. It is an online scanner that scans your computer using 64 antivirus and malware data bases.
It is free, and if used in combination with Windows Defender (built in), you should remain safe from infections.
I have been using this method for the past year and nothing has been able to get through.
 
Perhaps it should be noted that a new line of attack is malware which promises to be a virus scanner. It could be an infected copy or simply software that is advertised as virus protection. Virus protection software is a nice target as it has to run in the most protected layers of the operating system so it is something else to consider when deciding what to install.

The other thing is attack surface, anti-virus software introduces more vulnerabilities and because it runs at a very high level of protection Malware is now targetting antivirus software as an attack vector so be careful what you install.

Cheerio John
 
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