Which is best for virus protection and what's difference between AV and a firewall

londonman81

OK I'm a complete dummy when it comes to computer anti virus programs and firewalls etc

Can someone please answer these question to me:

1) What precisely is the role of an anti virus program? Does it actually repair viruses that have entered the computer?I.e reactive protection?

2) What is the role of a Firewall and how does it differ from an anti virus program? Does it simply stop them coming into the computer in the first place? I.e proactive protection?

3) What is spyware and how is it different to a virus? And what type of program stops spyware? Does an anti-vrisu do it?


4) Which programs are best for protecting my machine from all of these nasty menaces floating around in cyberspace nowadays? I've heard about Norton AV & PF being good bu then someone says its rubbish. I've also hearad AVG (the free one) is good - as well as AVAST? And what are Zone Alarm and Adaware needed for?


Are the free ones as good as the ones that cost money?

Sorry for all these novice qns but I'm not clued up on the basics of viruses etc at all - I find it very boring but I dont want to fall prey either!


Thanks

L

Joe_Bloggs

Answers to 1) and 2) is yes.
Some antivirus stuff can scan incomming email for nasties and be pro-active in this fashion like a firewall (AVG can scan email before you read it).

You can always be tempted to turn your browser security down and invite trojans onto your system. These will inturn download spyware and viruses that will transform the host computer into a zombie that just barely functions whilst propogating malware to other computers.

Zone Alarm is a firewall that can block incomming attacks and can also prevent existing software from accessing the net when it has no need to. You have to know what you are doing but all decisions are reversible. That is apart from the ones where you say yes to something that subsequently invites something in and it trashes your system.

Spyware can be something that tries to steal your identity and your money or just something that monitors your browsing preferences with a view to selling you something via popup ads.

Viruses on their own are often stupid irritants that just consume resources that could have been used by countermeasures. The cocktail of virii, trojans and spyware are what you tend to get if you do not have a firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware. Real time anti-trojan is also option. It can't work for something that has never been seen before.

This problem is not going away and more personal research is required by all computer users no matter how boring it seems.

J_B.

Debt_Free_Chick

All of these things monitor what's going on to your computer, in different ways, but they cannot simply prevent anything nasty. That depends on you. They will often warn you about doing something e.g. opening an attachment, but if you go ahead anyway, then you could compromise your system. It's like having a chain lock on the front door - you can take it off and open the door and if you do that without checking who's on the other side, you could be in trouble.

You need to nail down your security, especially IE, and then stop yourself from doing something potentially harmful. In particular ... never, never, never open an attachment in an email unless you know exactly who sent it and exactly why.

And never, never, never follow links in emails, unless you know where exactly where it's going and why. In particular, never follow links that claim to ask you to log on to your online account and check your security details.

HTH

Fran

Have a look at FAQ's which has links to Internet Security and other questions. The links lead to useful threads that have been put on this board.

JimArnold

A good anti virus program will repair most virus attacked files and quarantine those it can't repair but it will also scan all incoming e amils etc and remove viruses. A firewall will stop other kinds of attack eg if certain ports are open on your system it is possible for a remote user to get into your system without putting any program on your disk and therefore triggering a virus warning.

You need all three anti virus, firewall and spyware.
Persoanlly I choose to buy Norton Anti virus, use windows Xp builtin firewall and use SPYBOT free anti spyware

Oh and most important of all you need to keep windows up to date - frankly without a broadband connection that's pretty difficult asd some of the files are pretty big. It's esp important to keep Internet Explorer up to date

T4i

I think most people will agree with this;

Best AV at the mo, AVAST

Best Firewall is a router with hardware firewall or Zone Alarm ?

Best spyware/adaware are spybot, adaware6, microsoft spyware.

Best prevention for spyware spywareblaster and firefox or opera.

Best online scanners housecall and bit defender

and if something nasty does get onto a p.c hijackthis is a brill tool for identifiying/removing.

Fran

T4i wrote:

I think most people will agree with this;

To see other moneysavers' preferred security see the What security do you use? thread.

londonman81

Is AVAST good at actually eliminating viruses once it has scanned and detected them?

Thanks

L

Fran

Yes it is, but new viruses are being created all the time........

Reluctant_spender

Londonman - you will find that everybody has their favourites anti virus, firewall software etc....Some of my favourites are listed here and some are not.

What has already been mentioned on similar post is that no one piece of software is 100% - the thing to remember is that some protection is better than none - as Fran has stated new viruses are being created and therefore anti virus software is generally one step behind.

If you are unfortunate to be caught out with a virus or similar then there is always help available here.

tr3mor

On my PC i've got...

Avast

Zone Alarm and a hardware firewall Router

Spybot and AdAware

Firefox / Thunderbird

I think that should be sufficient to stop all but the biggest moron getting any problems.