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OT--Anti-Virus Programs


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I've run into an issue with Norton in that it will not let me run a full system scan, so I'm in the market for a new program.  Any suggestions as to what is the best on the market today, free or otherwise?  Thanks in advance.

 

JM

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I use Bitdefender on my sweetie's system. Works well, it just recently caught something attempting to mess with her browser. Not free though, just got an email from them for $25.

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Malwarebytes seems to have pretty good reviews and it's found stuff that AVG missed on my computer. They've got a free version. It also will remove "PUPs" (potentially unwanted programs). These are the tracking stuff that business puts on your computer to target you for ads. They got all touchy when these programs were called "malware" since they don't do any damage so they're called PUPs now.

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I'd google reviews, if you want to buy something.  But if you want opinions from the peanut gallery: 

 

1) My company farms out IT support and the contractor uses Webroot SecureAnywhere. I have no complaints. We travel world wide and the only person to get a virus is our barely computer literate president while in China and this was on his personal Suface Pro tablet, that I'm not sure is even managed by our IT support contractor.

 

2) For anti-virus I just use the builtin free Windows Defender and have never had a virus. At home I'm mostly concerned about malicious code picked up surfing. I use a layered approach, some of it's good habits (keep up with patches, don't open email from unknown sources), some of it's software. My Asus router has "AiProtrection by Trend Micro" this provides network security tools to audit your router configuration and most important to me is the Malicious Site Blocking which will just not allow computers on my network to connect to some websites. Next I use the AdBlock plugin for chrome and make sure the chrome Advanced setting "Protect you and your device from dangerous sites" is active. Again this is more web filtering. If I'm in full paranoia mode, I turn on a VPN connection to make it look like I'm connected somewhere in eastern Europe and turn on a black list filter or just use tor browser. In case I do get an infection, one of the router features is supposed to prevent it spreading on my LAN and I don't keep anything on my laptop. Anything worth keeping is either in the cloud or on a NAS on my LAN that has it's own antivirus app that runs nightly quick scans and weekly deep scans. Lastly I manually run a full Defender scan and Malwarebytes scan if my laptop seems to be behaving oddly.

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  • 1 month later...

Ditto Crash Test Dummy, we run Webroot SecureAnywhere and it is excellent. I've gotten one ransomware, about 7 or 8 years ago, and Webroot walked me through the de-bug over the phone. Excellent service!

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  • 11 months later...
  • 1 year later...

Well, everything is depending on which purpose have you chosen for this laptop. If it's just internet surfing, excel, and some work with the documents, you can just purchase new SSD, change a battery and get an antivirus ( you can read here about it https://macsecurity.net/view/124-remove-safe-finder-virus-from-mac-in-safari-chrome-and-firefox ) and you'll be fine.

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  • 10 months later...
On 3/16/2019 at 10:25 AM, Chsha said:

Guys, I also experience some problems with norton now so I am considering those two options at this point - avast vs bitdefender. Which one would you choose? Avast seems to be a bit better but I don't really want to pay extra ten bucks.

Avast is the Anti Virus, and only looks for viruses. Malware and spyware are seperate issues that can do as much damage as viruses. The spyware programs that I listed (or which ever you choose) are all free. Download them one at a time and run them one at a time to check for spyware. If you also want spyware blaster(highly recommended on this site) should be installed last, after you have run your other programs,because you need to start it on a clean computer.
After you install the programs you choose, update them before you use them. Oh, another good anti virus is AVG. I've used Avast which is very good, but right now I'm using AVG, which is also very good, and actually is easier to use. You can compare avast vs avg for better understanding. Just take your pick. Good luck with your decisions. There's a lot of good free stuff out there.

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