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What Free Antivirus Do You Install On Windows?
Techman83 writes "After years of changing between AVG Free + Avast, it's coming time to find a new free alternative for friends/relatives who run Windows. AVG and Avast have been quite good, but are starting to bloat out in size, and also becoming very misleading. Avast recently auto updated from 4.8 to 5 and now requires you to register (even for the free version) and both are making it harder to actually find the free version. Is this the end of reasonable free antivirus, or is there another product I can entrust to keep the 'my computer's doing weird things' calls to a minimum?"
I still use Avast. Oh noes, it took me 2 minutes to fill out the little form. It takes up few resources, it has updates for it nearly every day, it's free as in beer, and I have gotten a virus in ages. What's not to like?
Living With a Nerd
Microsoft security essentials http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
I mean, if anyone knows about viruses, it'd be Microsoft.
Microsoft Security Essentials is free, lightweight, and pretty good. Even Ars Techinca thought so, if you trust them.
I should think "friends/relatives who run Windows" would be exactly the type to appreciate the convenience of a low-impact reliable AV package, which means they may have to pay a few bucks. It's fine to play FOS yourself or with trivial office or audio stuff, and I do it myself. But I still give ESET a few shekels/year for each windows PC in my house. It just makes sense to me.
.nosig
Avira Anti-vir. It is good, fully functioned with updates, custom scheduled scans and on access scanning. The only thing you have to deal with is a daily ad that you can dismiss by hitting OK and it won't pop up for another 24 hours. Also it uses up half the resources of AVG, McAfee, Norton.
I concur, Security Essentials is pleasantly small to download, fast to install, easy on resources, and reasonably effective. Be aware though it does validate with Genuine Advantage.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Obviously you've never actually used Avast. You've always had to register for the free version, and renew the regsitration once a year. They're giving it away for free, I honestly don't see registering as a big deal.
And the new version is actually a lot better, it finally detects rootkits... If you're looking for something that actually does its job and yet doesn't take up any space or processing power, I doubt you'll find anything...
If you're gonna pay for your operating system, and then complain about free antiviruses, you might want to consider changing to linux...
Techman83 writes "...AVG and Avast have been quite good, but are starting to bloat out in size..."
Um, in case you haven't noticed, more viruses, exploits and malware are coming out all the time.
I'd be very surprised if ANY antivirus software got smaller.
In fact, I'd be highly suspicious.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
Excellent [buy v1agra] product. I haven't have any malware [|\|iger1an 419] detected since I installed it [install Antivirus 2009 today!].
I've been trying this out on my home computers so far and its definitely less resource intensive than previous AV solutions I've used. I haven't gotten infected with anything lately (that I know of) so I don't know how well it handles infections yet.
Actual web page is here and you can read up on it a bit here.
also beware of the fake Security Essentials that does bad things and also tries to get you to pay money:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/26/microsoft_security_essentials_rogue/
I respectfully disagree with your notion that Kaspersky is better than MSE. I had Kaspersky's basic anti-virus for 2 years before MSE came out, and it was a terrible resource hog. And not just during scans; the actual real-time protection would increase the time to open a video file from ~2 seconds after double-clicking to ~15 seconds.
Additionally, when it detects a suspicious file, the program issues the most gut-wrenching squealing noise I've ever heard. And it does this by default; you have to go into settings to disable the noise.
[/anecdote]
At work (a university) the central IT has chosen to license Sophos. It is, well, crap to put it mildly and takes up amazing amounts of resources. So, instead we use Security Essentials on many systems. Works well, it has successfully stopped viruses that users have tried to get. Pretty light on resources over all, not the lightest weight program I've seen but up there.
Best one for free I've seen. Personally ESET NOD32 is my favourite and what I license for home, but if the price requirement is $0, then MSE is what I use.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/09/first-look-microsoft-security-essentials-impresses.ars
An in-depth look at Microsoft Security Essentials, it made me decide to try it out on my girlfriend's laptop (I run OS X myself) and it's worked great.
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
avast kept popping up ads to buy their stuff.
switched to avira, no popups. similar number of false positives as avast... i saw no difference between them. but really, who knows if they're working.
is there a way to evaluate antivirus software? i mean, after it's 1.) no popups, 2.) not bloaty 3.) easy on the system 4.) convenient to use... how do you know if it actually works?
I mean I could write a system tray app that's a "virus checker". and always tells you your system's ok... haha
anyway, reading around, seemed like avast, avira, and avg were the best free ones. and after running avg and avast, I liked avira. but really, no idea who's the best.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
- I let windows check for updates, but install them manually.
- I mostly download my software from sourceforge / cygwin's mirrors (yes, I'm risking that those could be compromised).
I haven't noticed anything fishy yet, and my WoW account hasn't been hacked in 5 years :-)
Microsoft Security Essentials. It's really the only choice imo. All the others are trying to sell you something. Now, if you're willing to pay, there are perhaps better choices. The most important thing to remember is to not take it too awful seriously. All AV sucks, badly. It's reactive and it only detects a small percentage of the naughty things. It's the only option, but it sucks. MSSE is good.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
I use AVG's free edition for on-access scanning, just for a little extra protection, because I am generally able to avoid getting infected with anything. (Even if something does slip by me, I can often track it down through a service it installs, entry in startup lists, or running processes.)
If I'm downloading something that has a big potential for being a virus (e.g. a no-CD crack), I'll scan it manually with AVG, and also upload it to a scanning service like virusscan.jotti.org or virustotal.com, which take a file and put it through a number of anti-virus products.
Natually, AVG has also been making it harder to find the free edition. They, of course, want you to buy the full AVG Internet Security package. (To find AVG Free, you have to go to free.avg.com, and look for the less-flashy, more hidden buttons.)
Between my job, some side work and friends and family I manage close to 70 Windows machines. I have been doing IT since 1992.
When I am asked this question my answer is always this. None. I think antivirus is more trouble than it is worth. First any new viruses will be undetected, second the pain of actually running anti virus outweighs any marginal benefit received from it.
Of course this answer immediately creates a follow up question... Well then what do you do?
The best way to protect yourself is to run as NON - ADMIN. That's it. A coworker recently got a virus and I simply logged in as admin and ran a free online virus scan. It found his problem and removed it.
http://p8ste.com - Web based Clipboard
Web accelerator is nothing more than a cacheing proxy. install a proxy to replace it.
emulators, sorry, but bothand more are available under linux.
flash works fine.
Opera 10 - dont know I dont use it.
Realplayer-- WHY? Who cares?
Ipod mp4 video works perfectly fine. did you even try?
Sorry but 80% of all your claims have not been true for 2 or more years now, and some are simply forever false. I've played SNES games under linux for over 10 years now.
I can add to your list that Linux will run IE6 and IE7 AND IE8 fine under wine. as well as REalplayer if you really want that.
I'll try opera 10 tonight, but I suspect it will work perfectly under Ubuntu 9.10.
Oh I can also play WMA and WMV files as well as other non linux file formats.
P.S. I'm really sad for you, having to live with a Dialup ISP must suck. You cant get broadband at all? no WISP service? How about CDMA?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's also the whole monopoly thing. They got into big trouble for bundling a free browser into windows. Because, I mean, what OS actually comes with a browser? (Of course things were a little different in 1995.)
Can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?
You mean I can download my anti-virus software from an oddly named third party that I've never heard of? Forgive me if I pass.
Just because you can't be 100% safe with any given product is no reason to abandon it entirely.
I recently reinstalled Windows, and while I've historically used Avast, I opted to go with nothing this time around. I'm tired of resource usage and slower load times for everything thanks to antivirus; I've moved my e-mail to Google Apps, so they scan my e-mails for viruses. My use of Bittorrent is extremely limited (I only have it installed because Star Trek Online's installer is available via torrent), and I never visit the seedier side of the internet. I'm behind a firewall.
Basically I'm not going to get a virus, so I see no reason to run anti-virus software. Rather than "Can't be 100% safe, may as well not use it", my reasoning is "I'm already 99.99999% safe, so why bother".
(Yes, I know it's still technically possible to get a virus. But the chances are extremely slim, given the way I use my computer.)
I could live without an on-access scan (tell your download manager to scan downloaded files), but Clamwin is completely unusable, IMHO, because it uses up much more system memory, and takes 4X as long to scan compared to the more common Free AVs.
If you want real, free antivirus, go with MoonSecure (v2.x), which is GPL, does on-access scanning, and uses the ClamAV database. It does (momentarily) use up a lot of memory, and slow down the system, but only when first starting up, or updating definitions. Other than that, it's no more of a dog than any other free AV. Free for commercial purposes, likely to have definitions available forever, etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That's right. If you:
why would you be more insecure under Windows than you be doing the same thing under OS X or Linux? Sure, the greater market share of Windows leads to more effort being put into creating malware for it, and that presumably increases the overall risk slightly. But that's a minor point. In general terms, used properly, a Windows system running without an antivirus package is adequately secure.
The problem is that Windows users tend to have terrible security hygiene. They turn security features off, never update, and click the dancing bunnies. That's a separate, social issue. Never try to apply a technical solution to a social problem.
These days, the Windows security model is pretty good; you can attach a security descriptor to practically any kernel object, and the NT kernel has supported ACLs since day one. Slashdot needs to stop living in 1999. We're not talking about Windows 98. You can't crash a machine by pinging it, and it doesn't blue screen every day. Hell, you can even keep it up long than 49.7 days!
Bashing Windows today for the faults of the system a decade just makes you look ridiculous. It's like bashing Linux for not having hardware hot-plugging, or bashing Macs for not having preemptive multitasking. It's ludicrous. You want to bash Microsoft for pervasive DRM? Fine. You want to bash them for outrageous market segmentation? You want to bash them for their traditional embrace-extend-extinguish approach to standards? Fine. Want to bash them for still not having a real package manager in the OS? fine. Those are all still issues. But security and robustness aren't.
Reinterpretation of "buy a mac or use linux" mantra every time someone asks for an Windows related advice in all too familiar car terminology:
Windows user: I have this $non-descript-japanese-model hatchback and.... ...
Pundit: Scrap that shit, get a Mercedes!
WU: Well, it's just this noise...
Pundit: Mercedes! Japanese cars are shit!
WU: I can't afford that - anyway I was saying...
Pundit: Then you have to go for a tank!
WU: A tank? WTF? Is this a car service?
Pundit: Or F22 fighter jet. It will happen sooner or later, sonny boy, you car is a piece of shit, it will fall apart any day. Why delaying the inevitable? Switch to proven quality!
WU: Uh... ok, I'll go with it. How do I drive a tank? How do I even get the fucking tank?
Pundit: It's free! You just have to join the military and pass the training and you're good to go!
WU: Can I drive it to work?
Pundit: Not really but who cares! It's rock solid!
WU:
And so on...
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
Clam sentinel is a program that detects file system changes and automatically scans the files added or modified using ClamWin. Require the installation of ClamWin. For Microsoft Windows 98/98SE/Me/2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/clamsentinel/
HTH.
Deleted
Microsoft Security Essentials is all you need for non-enterprise A/V.
It's free, it's unobtrusive and it works very well. What's more, commercial AV vendors, like Symantec, realise what a threat it is to their business model and have published a lot of FUD about you get what you pay for - however all the benchmarks I've seen have it ranking up there with the best of them.
The only reason to go for a commercial AV package is if you need a management and reporting console to manage a large number of computers.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
You're talking as if you only get virus while actively looking for them.
Oblivion Awaits
I installed the Ubuntu anti-virus and now everything looks different and my games and a bunch of Apps I use don't work!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not like that at all. It's like sleeping with the same woman every night while taking the chance that someone has come by and stuck her with a needle she wasn't aware of.
The chances of that happening are extremely slim.
So... the sites I use often. When was the last time Ars Technica or Slashdot was compromised with something spreading a virus? How about Penny-Arcade or xkcd?
I haven't said it isn't possible, I've only said I'm willing to risk the extremely small chance that I'll get a virus.
Between my job, some side work and friends and family I manage close to 70 Windows machines. I have been doing IT since 1992.
Congrats, welcome to being a Junior Systems Administator.
When I am asked this question my answer is always this. None. I think antivirus is more trouble than it is worth. First any new viruses will be undetected, second the pain of actually running anti virus outweighs any marginal benefit received from it.
The crimeware industry is collectively thanking you for spreading your fantastic and totally bogus advice. Running a Windows box sans AV might be fine for you because you're so smart and have never found a rootkit on your machine, but I suspect your motivation for telling your less aware friends to use no AV whatsoever on a Windows machine is so you can generate some more side work. News Flash: Running a non-admin account will not even slow down some of the major botnet penetration rates - Depending upon what other apps you have loaded on your machine, Zeus can pwn non-admin run machines too, smart guy - Google "privilege escalation". At least with some freebie AV, you might be able to catch the variant that came out yesterday, but probably not the one that came out an hour ago...better then nothing at all which is what your advice amounts to...but telling them to run something that's even free, or simply educating them about defensive internet use is too much trouble for you, in your mind. A screen door and a clue is better then no damned door and at all.
Your security insights to the those who don't know any better then to listen to you is dangerous, and your suspect motivation is even worse. You'd be better off with the standard "Install Linux and you don't need AV" or "Get a Mac" spiel or better yet, take your advice back to 1993-1994 (and you were in IT then, so you say) when it was last actually correct.....that's about the last time Windows was safe from *requiring* some sort of AV. You've probably never seen what happens to someone who's great at what they do in the outside world (IE rather intelligent), and has a semi-clue with computers, have to put their lives back together after their identity was sold for a pittance (the going rate for a stolen identity is around $15.00 USD) after opening a well engineered landmine of a mail. All that horseshit you see about LifeLock and whatnot....Doesn't do jack squat after you've had your life pwnd. It's pretty sad that one little click on an email with a zipped EXE masked as a PDF attachment that was on a up to date XP machine with Automatic Updates on with an exipred licensed AV client and an older version of Acrobat Reader installed run with non-admin rights can have such ugly consequences....an up to date freebie AV client would probably have caught this little piece of trash....or have you told friends that Acrobat 7.0 Reader isn't really all that safe? I was told about it afterwards "when I clicked on the PDF it didn't do anything or launch Acrobat so I didn't think anything of it", she not knowing it had done its silent install and began mining away on her machine and was happy to report back her banking details to the C&C server. Her understanding of a virus was it would immediately alert her that she caught something like spring porn pop-ups all over the place (this isn't 2004 anymore) or change her background and tell her she was infected (she must have caught SpyFalcon or one of those fake AV types of rogue scareware once before) - do you educate your friends and users that these new viruses do whatever they can to not announce their presence, or is that also too much trouble for you? You were the hero with your free online tool and caught the one that did, congrats...here's your cookie. Did you get all of it.......?
We live in a crime filled world, where some smart folks want to do as little as possible to make the fat bank and don't give a shit who's lives they ruin. Your identity sells for next-to-nothing on the underground n