Best antivirus?

[kiwiMark]

I know next to nothing about antivirus software (lolmac user).

I'm currently working at a youth hostel getting all their staff/reception/guest computers back in order, making sure that wifi works properly throughout the whole building and all sorts of other boring stuff.

Obviously I've been pushing pretty hard for replacing the reception, back-office and guest computers with one single iPad, but I'm hitting the language barrier or something because bosslady won't go for it.

So now that we're locked into Windows, I was wanting to get FTR's powerpooterusers' opinions on what antivirus software I should shove onto all of the computers. Free is obviously a big plus (avg or avira still the way to go here?), but if there's a consensus that one of the pay ones really is worth paying the cashdollars, I can try to convince the bosslady that the hostel will explode without this investment.

Thankee thankee thankee

[Shotglass]

I use avast...has both free and $$$ versions.

[jackvance]

Yeah just go with AV. Dont get shit like norton it is worse than having a rootkit virus. Mcafee is best if u want to go for a paid solution.

[rong]

Avg 2012 and avast 7 seem to be the most popular freebies with people bitchung or raving about both.

[BooG690]

Avast.

[kiwiMark]

Forgot to specify in OP: qualified member opinions only please

[BooG690]

[kiwiMark]

relay vote for microsoft security blah

<@fb> just use the MS antivirus
<@fb> if the keys legit its actually really good
<@fb> its fast always updated and never bothers you with shit

[Hawk]

Another vote for MS

[bigred]

Condoms and washing your hands.

[MadMojoMonkey]

It goes w/o saying that Windows Defender should be turned on and set to auto-update. It's easiest to add this to the startup tab (start / run / MSConfig) so that you are reminded to turn it on whenever the 'puter boots up.

I use AVG free, which is updated and runs a full system scan daily (when I go to sleep). Also, I let AVG run as my resident anti-virus software.

I support this with 2 programs, which I update and use once a week:
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Spybot Search&Destroy

All of these are free and the final two programs rarely find anything that AVG has missed, but they do catch some stuff sometimes, so worth the free download.

The bottom line with deciding on which anti-virus/anti-malware/anti-bot software to use is to remember that no single software will provide 100% protection. The black-hats far outnumber the white-hats, and will occasionally find a back door through one of the major softwares. It is far less likely that 2 softwares will have the same opening in the back door, so using multiple softwares is reasonable. However, you don't want to have that much processor speed taken up every second of your day. Also, you don't want to pay 2 companies full price when only 1 of them is doing full work.

[joker131]

ravi. avg. not to bad free. i use ravi. but a lot off computers on 1 line pay for the best.

[NightGizmo]

Yeah just go with AV. Dont get shit like norton it is worse than having a rootkit virus. Mcafee is best if u want to go for a paid solution.

This advice would have been accurate a few years ago, but now it's flipped. Mcafee is crap, Norton is great. Mcafee will slow down your computer considerably, sometimes making it unusable. I stopped using it earlier this year. My brother is still using it (his subscription runs out in a month and he's switching) and the weekly scans cripple his computer for over 36 hours -- ridiculous. My wife still runs it at work -- just last week she got a mass email from Mcafee saying "Oops, we accidentally pushed out an update that broke some people's networking and you might need to do some stuff to fix it."

Norton has become one of the best again -- I have it installed and I don't even notice it.

[wufwugy]

uninstalled avira free because they made it very difficult to figure out how to stop the daily popups, but it did work well. avg free is fine.

[WillburForce]

Condoms and washing your hands.

I was gonna suggest a condom over the monitor. Hard to see what you're doing, but better to be safe than sorry.

Right where's the drunk thread????

[bikes]

[rong]

lol

[Jack Sawyer]

Microsoft security essentials

[BooG690]

Stupid Facebook. Fucking dudes greatly increases your chances of getting AIDS.

[kiwiMark]

Sounds like MS is pulling ahead

Thanks everyone, is appreciated

[eugmac]

yeah i switched to security essentials, and i keep recommending it to people. people still managed to get random malware on there somehow though, so ymmv.

[alneal]

antivirus -eset nod 32 ,
firewall - outpost
antivirus utility -avz.exe

[jackvance]

This advice would have been accurate a few years ago, but now it's flipped. Mcafee is crap, Norton is great. Mcafee will slow down your computer considerably, sometimes making it unusable. I stopped using it earlier this year. My brother is still using it (his subscription runs out in a month and he's switching) and the weekly scans cripple his computer for over 36 hours -- ridiculous. My wife still runs it at work -- just last week she got a mass email from Mcafee saying "Oops, we accidentally pushed out an update that broke some people's networking and you might need to do some stuff to fix it."

Norton has become one of the best again -- I have it installed and I don't even notice it.

You are right my experience with those is from a few years ago. Bought a laptop with norton pre-installed, it was so annoying I tried to get rid of it but in doing so it broke my laptop's ability to use the internet and I had to format and reinstall a bootleg windows. Nowadays I just use AVG and rely on the standard windows stuff. General security on the internet has also greatly improved which makes it harder to get infected.

But whichever virus scanner you use, there's no substitute for being careful. Virus scanners look for generic things that virusses share, but for a large part they try to find the exact pattern of known virusses. I know a guy that writes virusses, and he showed me a previously known virus which all the scanners could detect, where he just changed one line of code (having no effect on the functionality) and no virus scanner could detect it anymore.

[Pascal]

I use avast and I'm happy with it

[kiwiMark]

Isn't Avast the one that talks to you in that annoying woman's voice once a day? YOUR AVAST BLAH DE BLAH HAS BEEN BLAH DE BLAH'D. These aren't my computers so I guess I don't care so much, but that would drive me mental.

[rong]

I fucking hate that.

[Luco]

+1 for microsoft security essentials. We use the business version at work (forefront client security)

[kiwiMark]

also they've been getting outgoing spam (iunno how else to name it: people are getting spam sent from the hostel's email address, that the hostel has nothing to do with). I haven't even googled yet which I will do, but if anybody happens to have experience or a good read or w/e on hand then feel free to hit me up!

[a500lbgorilla]

Abstinence from the internet is the only 100% effective anti-virus.

[Luco]

also they've been getting outgoing spam (iunno how else to name it: people are getting spam sent from the hostel's email address, that the hostel has nothing to do with). I haven't even googled yet which I will do, but if anybody happens to have experience or a good read or w/e on hand then feel free to hit me up!

Run AV on every machine and change all email passwords.

[eugmac]

Abstinence from the internet is the only 100% effective anti-virus.

Nah not even that, remember those rootkits that came included with USB sticks? Viruses used to be spread by floppy disks!

[eugmac]

For your hostel, maybe something like a virtual machine that gets automatically restored to the default state at each login? Would that work, jackvance et al? I can't say for sure, but I'm sure my friend who works as an IT guy at a university rigged up something like that, although the details are fuzzy in my head.