I’ve been reading about this new virus that is supposed to strike tomorrow and I’m wondering if anyone has used any of the free virus protection programs that are out there. I have heard some of these work very well but I don’t know the names of these programs.
Any thoughts on virus freeware?
Thanks.
AVG is the best I’m aware of.
I use AVG. Haven’t had any problems with it.
ive got my family and friends hooked up with Avast. I found it a few years ago and havent had a problem since.
Your best defense to this is to have your Windows updates, up to date! This threat was stopped back in October 08 with a Windows update.
After that and you get it some how, LOL. Use AVG 8.5 and or Bitdefender will both work well for you.
I dont feel bad for you if you get it because its been fixed for months now. Ignoring simple updates is going to get you hurt this round.
I have avast and I am very happy with it. I used to have AVG but did not like the constant downloading and scans that it ran. Probably why it is good though. Avast has picked up some pretty good stuff on my computer and I haven’t had any problems with it since I converted.
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Your best defense to this is to have your Windows updates, up to date! This threat was stopped back in October 08 with a Windows update.
After that and you get it some how, LOL. Use AVG 8.5 and or Bitdefender will both work well for you.
I dont feel bad for you if you get it because its been fixed for months now. Ignoring simple updates is going to get you hurt this round.
I haven’t been ignoring simple updates and have been doing regular updates with Microsoft, contrary to what you might think. We’ll see how everything pans out with this virus tomorrow I guess.
More than anything the discussion about this virus and 60 Minutes this past week has got me thinking that I need to scan my computer more frequently for viruses. I’ve heard good things about this AVG and don’t want to pay Norton or some other company for virus protection if I don’t have to.
Thanks.
One way to get around the April Fool virus is to set your computer system date back a day or 2 today. Then on 4/2 re-set your date to current.
-J.
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I use AVG. Haven’t had any problems with it.
Yep 
We use a combination of AVG and CCleaner, have never had any problems with either
Have my whole network setup with Avast. It’s just as good or better than the big box brand paid subscription anti-virus software. I also recomment Zonealarm firewall and Ad-aware spyware remover. Both are free and keep me safe and secure like a warm blanket in winter.
Many free software programs scare you into purchasing something because they tell you about all the problems you have on your computer. Many of these free programs can actually be a way to get onto your computer and cause problems and download things. When you click I AGREE you might be surprised what you are agreeing to. If you want the low down, go to symantec. That is what we have been updating with and they already have some uninstall things to help. I personally use Trend because Symantec is a memory hog. According to Symantec the program is suppose to start sending out 500 requests per day for info instead of 250. This is just what I have read and what we have done to our work computers. Hope it helps.
We had a notice pop up that AVG was no longer going to be free and would cost us like $55/yr after April 12th. Anybody else get this?
I use SUPERAntiSpyware, recommended by some geeky friends. Free and can get rid of the worst ones. I paid for one and it couldn’t get rid of whatever I had and I downloaded this free one and boom gone. Ask all your techy friends and if you don’t have any you can borrow mine, but their vote goes to superantispyware.
Suuperanti spyware is the one I have on my pc too. My sons girlfriends dad is a real computer whiz and she downloaded it for me on mine a month ago. I’ve tried other free versions of other anti spyware programs and they would find what they did, but this version found twice as many, im not a computer whizz but it works for me and is also anti virus thats free. Its supposed to be the best on the web by what he says and he builds pc’s. Hey its free, give it a try and run it right away.
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I use SUPERAntiSpyware
Great program, been on my computer for years. You still need an antivirus program as SAS does not do everything. Also CrapCleaner as mentioned earlier to clean up tracks, temporary files and manage cookies.
If you have kept up your Windows updates, chances are good that you do not have the Conficker virus. A simple test is if you can open the following websites, then you do not have it as it blocks access to common antivirus makers webpages.
Conficker
McAfee
I did quite a bit of research and supposedly the best free software is “Spybot Search and Destroy”. Dell, our IT department and my internet provider all agree, so that’s who I use. I ran a scan with Spybot and it picked up 32 problems AVG missed.
There is nothing wrong with Spybot, I have it on my computer. I would bet that most of what it found were tracking cookies which are mostly benign. I also have AdAware and SpywareBlaster. There is a difference between viruses, adware/spyware, trojan horses and other various forms of malware. There is often overlapping of the protection/removal properties of these programs. No one program does it all unless you own a suite. It is very important to have all bases covered.
I would leave your virus protection program active in the background. All others can be used for on demand scans. SpywareBlaster is somewhat different as it blocks places in the computer where spyware programs like to attack and attach themselves. It is thus not active, but puts up a shield to help protect you and is free.
SUPER antispyware just picked up 461 threats on my computer… 
from this guy…
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SUPER antispyware just picked up 461 threats on my computer…
Pron much? 
Just gotta tease ya, I’ll bet most were cookies…. and mostly legit.
I stopped using Spywareblaster a year or so ago, both spybot, and AVG should do the same job now, but it was a good program never had a problem.
Running AVG 8.5 free, spybot, malaware bytes, cc cleaner, and hijack this. Most of those I only use and update on occasion, hijack this is super powerful, but you gotta be careful it’ll take things out that you ask it to, that may not be a good idea, bit of a learning curve there, one of the best products I’ve used to combat viruses and such. I’m super picky about programs running in the background that need not be running, I turn off pretty much everything, but my antivirus, face it this computer is atleast 3 years old, and it isn’t getting faster, the key is to keep running programs at a minimum so I don’t use up resources.
I’ll also run an online scan or too on occasion, bit defender and Kesperky’s (sp?) are the ones I got to that have found things AVG or something else missed the first time around.
OK but you got me thinking about superantispyware, so I downloaded it, and ran it at it came up with 2! yup, two, both are real legit cookies for me, so I added them to the trusted list, realistically leaving me with 0. 
As a hint I always run CC cleaner before starting a scan on anything, gets rid of all the cookies from comming up as problems and keeps the cookies I want, like here so I don’t have to sign in everytime. it also makes the searches go quicker
Man this is gettin deep, the more I learn the more I find out I don’t know. 
Are all the anti virus programs good or are some really better then others. I was told by a computer tech. that Norton slows a computer down because the programs so big. he also told me go to Staples and buy Panda virus protection, he said it automatically notices secure sites and dosen’t watch everything your pc does. He said norton will slow older machines down because the programs so big, sound right?
There are certainly better ones and less effective ones on the market, right now I’m staying away from Norton’s and Mcafee’s, couple computer’s I’ve helped fix up recently were using Mcafee’s, not sure that’s Mcafee’s fault or not, but I’m staying away.
I uninstall norton’s on any computer (that I can) for that reason it is a resource hog and does slow computer’s down. For me the combo of AVG free and spybot is more than enough, I’m a married family guy so my surfing is really tame, so I don’t really fear a lot because 95% of my surfing is one sites I visit daily, and I rarely download anything new.
I’ve heard if you were going to buy a program, Avira is suppose to the best right now, Avira free didn’t offer them amount of protection AVG free does, which is why I’m still using AVG myself.
Kind of and Ford vs. Chevy problem… everyone has their opinions.
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Man this is gettin deep, the more I learn the more I find out I don’t know.
Same here… 
Computers just aren’t my gig I guess.
Ha Ha Nick by the way… 
So if I understand this right, cookies are used by your computer to fast track them to a specific site that you have been to before. Are they ever removed other than when you run a spyware program? This is the first time I have run a spyware program on this computer and I have had this for over 3 years. Probably why it has been running slower than a turtle this last year…
Basically this thread is showing there is plenty of free software out there that does the same or BETTER job than software people pay money for. Back when I figured out that Norton was more about marketing and less about actually stopping viruses, I started going to cnet.com and reading about the different freeware and downloading a bunch and trying them out. I think it is a good place to find whatever you are looking for.
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So if I understand this right, cookies are used by your computer to fast track them to a specific site that you have been to before. Are they ever removed other than when you run a spyware program? This is the first time I have run a spyware program on this computer and I have had this for over 3 years. Probably why it has been running slower than a turtle this last year…
Actually a cookie’s job is to remember information for you for a given website, so that site doesn’t have the info, kind of a safe guard In part, in part to speed up the process.
The other thing that helps is cleaning up your cache, which in internet explorer is referred to as temporary internet files, those are what you can use to speed up loading a site, basically it remembers images and such from particular sites and loads them from the Hard drive instead of downloading them each time, in today’s world, most people internet connections are fast enough to re download the files an such in about the same amount of time. So I set the disk space in the internet options to a small number (20 megs or so) so I keep some on the stuff, and just re download the rest, keeping the computer working a bit faster and Hard drive space to a maximum, Cleaning up a buddy’s computer the other day, I got him nearly 2 gigs of hard drive space by deleting these files. Generally speaking it will speed up your browsing to clean them up once in awhile, or not let it build up by limiting the space you’ll let it use to store the info in the first place.
CC cleaner does a great job getting rid of that stuff, and then you go in and create the exceptions for the cookies you want to keep like your log in info for IDO, or for you email, by selecting those sites, and then it won’t delete the ones you want to keep only delete the extra crap.
If you are using Internet Explorer 8, I have read that you should turn off the immunization feature of either Spybot or Spywareblaster or both as much of this is built in and tends to slow down the browser.
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