free anti-virus/spyware etc. protection

[johnb]

You may find it inordinately difficult to remove all traces of Norton from your PC unless they have changed things since I last delved into the murky world of PCs. There were (are?) many stories of bits of Norton lurking about under the hood and causing no end of problems.

There are Norton removal tools that will (hopefully) leave the PC clean of the Norton product: https://www-secure.symantec.com/nort...=1&pvid=f-home

Do though remember to set a restore point before running.

I confess that I have been using Norton Internet Security for about 10 years, on various machines - mainly through inertia rather than any attachment to the produce. That said, I have never had any virus or trojan infection, touch wood.

[MrGongGong]

aaah Norton removal

anyone remember Bonzi Buddy ? stuck like s**t to a blanket

[Dave2002]

I have moved over to Mac OS X during the last few years, and hardly ever bother with Windows PCs now. The Macs are largely virus free, but there have been recent reports of some taking hold. In order to protect others I use the Sophos software, which traps phishing attacks, and PC viruses, so that I don't propagate them. http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products...e-edition.aspx

For PCs I have in the past used quite a few, including AVG, Avast, Zone Alarm. Mostly I have used the free versions, though sometimes these are tricky to find. I have paid for service for one or two years, but generally I don't think it's worth it. I once paid for MacAfee, which was horrendous. It may have protected my machines, but slowed everything to a snail's pace.

AVG and Avast (free) seem good enough for most purposes, though I have also used Adaware (Lavasoft) and Malwarebytes as an extra check.

There does seem to be some evidence that some of the better paid for AV software can do a better job, and there may well be malware which hardly any AV software will pick up. Mostly you don't know that these things work unless they claim to find a problem.

I heard that Kaspersky was very good, but I found it was a pain to install as it was incompatible with most of the other security software I had installed. I never got to finish the install. If someone has it already, then I'd probably say stick with it. The alternative might be to wipe all trace of it, then start again with another vendor's software, but that was one package which caused major incompatibilities for me.

I was going to add that using WAN monitoring tools can also help, as if problems are suspected (e.g your computer runs veeeerrrryyyy slowly) it helps to find out which processes are connected externally, and what they're connected to. This can be really interesting, and it's usually possible to disconnect processes which look dodgy. I'll get back with some suggestions later.

[MrGongGong]

One solution if you are seriously worried about these things and have relatively simple computing needs is to use an "obsolete" operating system
no one writes windows 98 viruses anymore
and it still works

I did have the recent trojan thing on my Macbook which was a bit tricky to remove (time for the Terminal !) but now patched

[DracoM]

AVG has done stuff for me more than adequately.
Of course, much depends on how wild is the internet usage in the household, but for most things AVG seems OK.

[Dave2002]

There are Norton removal tools that will (hopefully) leave the PC clean of the Norton product: https://www-secure.symantec.com/nort...=1&pvid=f-home

Do though remember to set a restore point before running.

I confess that I have been using Norton Internet Security for about 10 years, on various machines - mainly through inertia rather than any attachment to the produce. That said, I have never had any virus or trojan infection, touch wood.

>>>I have never had any virus or trojan infection, touch wood.
How do you know?

There are web sites and other tools which you can access which will test out your security protection. Whether or not you wish to try these may depend on how cynical and/or trusting you are. I think some of them are genuine, and will honestly check out your system, but of course some of them may be fake, or even only partially fake (!! even 0.005% is bad enough) and install malware on your system.

One possibility for checking out those sites would be not to run browsers on your machine, but rather in a VM (Virtual Machine environment). That way, if you suspect that a site is not behaving properly, then you can kill the VM to minimise problems. Also, might make sense not to run from your own IP.

[johnb]

Dave,

Rather you than me!

[Northender]

AVG has done stuff for me more than adequately.
Of course, much depends on how wild is the internet usage in the household, but for most things AVG seems OK.

Same here.

[Dave2002]

Dave,

Rather you than me!

I presume you mean regarding the threat testing. I have actually tried some of those sites in the past, and was very surprised to see what they came up with. Allegedly none of them got through my protection.

There's a bit more on threat testing etc. here - http://www.penetration-testing.com/h...source=adwords

I recall that I did use the tests at the Gibson site - https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 and it was informative. Hopefully it didn't cause any problems.

I did not try the tests at HackerWatch - http://www.hackerwatch.org/probe/ - so can't say whether I'd recommend them or not.

However, without doing some form of testing, how can one ever know that firewall or AV software is working at all? A negative response does not tell you much. Maybe you need to get one of your friends to send you a copy of a virus!

[Dave2002]

I was going to add that using WAN monitoring tools can also help, as if problems are suspected (e.g your computer runs veeeerrrryyyy slowly) it helps to find out which processes are connected externally, and what they're connected to. This can be really interesting, and it's usually possible to disconnect processes which look dodgy. I'll get back with some suggestions later.

TCPView is a good tool for monitoring connections on a Windows PC - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb897437.aspx

Recommended!