Free antivirus software article

All the posts here make valid points and I fully support the suggestion of checking out av comparison sites such as av-comparatives.org and others, as the effectiveness of antivirus products vary over time. Whilst I support a lot that MSE has to say, doing antivirus on the cheap is bad advice.

You cannot protect a device, be it a pc/laptop, routers, games console, PDA etc, that executes program code 100%, you can only minimise the risk with a decent current antivirus product.

However the article and posts here miss an important point. That is in my some 30 odd years of telecom/IT industry experience, a lot of the info here would go straight over the heads of a lot of the general public who would not have a clue what is being being discussed here and a lot of people who do understand can't be bothered with hassle anyway, so a different approach is needed.

One of the increasing popular ways of minimising risk is to keep your data and operating systems (OS) resources separate, and then use a CD live type system where you reload your OS from a clean source everytime you switch on or wake up your computing device.

Some critical sites I have worked at in the past reload their OS at least every 30mins.

As for MACs and their supposedly virus free world, well let me say my IT colleagues who work on MAC platforms only, wish that was the case. The MAC world has only got off lightly until recently because of their low market share compared to Windows, the iphone and ipad has changed all that.

A number of newly formed Academy schools in my area have gone exclusively to the MAC platform with no Windows machines at all AND given all their students ipad's for school and personal use. As one of my colleagues said it's only a matter of time before all hell breaks out in the MAC world

A PC 'Expert' in PC World told me today

1) That the free Anti-Virus softwares give it to you free because they send viruses to you to see if their software is working. Sometimes the viruses they send to you get through and then your computer is infected.

2) That when using free anti-spam/malware protection while using Internet banking and your identity is stolen that they will not pay out.

Are these true? I suspect not, because the free AV software is usually free because it's their old version and the latest version is the one people pay for. And these days banks have their own encryption and virus protection within their website.

But humour me please!

Alfa_Female wrote: »

A PC 'Expert' in PC World told me today

1) That the free Anti-Virus softwares give it to you free because they send viruses to you to see if their software is working. Sometimes the viruses they send to you get through and then your computer is infected.

2) That when using free anti-spam/malware protection while using Internet banking and your identity is stolen that they will not pay out.

Are these true? I suspect not, because the free AV software is usually free because it's their old version and the latest version is the one people pay for. And these days banks have their own encryption and virus protection within their website.

But humour me please!

1) AV firms would be sued out of existence if that was ever proved right. It's more likely to be AV updates that aren't friendly with the OS registry that cause corruption/crashes, but not an actual virus itself.

2) I'd also be disinclined to believe this, however - I would double check your bank will still cover you if you chose to use different paid AV software than whatever they gave to online users. I personally refuse to use Kaspersky as they've been hacked themselves, the once, and that's what Barclays gives out for free. I'd like to think this is what the guy in PC World meant, as opposed to flat-out lying.

jdo wrote: »

Secondly is the choice of browser. I have always been under the impression that Internet Explorer is the most 'risky' to use simply due to the fact that it dominated the market so it was more worthwhile for people to spend time exploiting it. That market dominance has waned somewhat recently with Firefox now also very popular. Personally I use Opera which has a much smaller useage. Am I still right to think this way or am I wrong - please tell me straight!!

Thanks again for all the help so far, it is greatly appreciated.

For internet banking I use nothing but Opera, just because they seem to have stayed the fastest at fixing bugs as opposed to bringing out whole new versions for banner headlines like Mozilla/Firefox and taking ages to take them to x.0.1. Internet Explorer? It depends whether hackers will bother to attack the 64-Bit version in Windows 7 as much as they did v1-8, but MS does make it easy with updates that are rare outside of the monthly roundup.

Avira have tinkered with Antivir and if they didn't have a special offer on the version before this one for a 3-user licence covering all the family machines, I may not have bothered. The 2012 version needs to be properly configured if you were used to the regular 2hr update schedule of the old one, and for that reason I've left the old version on the laptop with new updates, until the core engine update gets forced. Just hoping they don't start with the annual updating for the sake of it, as that's what ruined Norton and McCaffee in the first place.

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Troll alert ??

Huh? I posted here and then simply realised that it was completely the wrong place. Why does posting the same question mean I must be a troll? What is a troll anyway?

Thank you so much for your lovely warm welcome!

Thank you to everyone else for your help and advice. Much appreciated.