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Ask Slashdot: Actual Best-in-Show For Free Anti Virus?
First time accepted submitter paperclipman writes "I'm on the college student budget and want to make sure that my recent investment in an Acer laptop will last me a good long while. I like to think of myself as a reasonably competent CPU user so I'm no adventurous link-clicker, but I do download some music as a recent SoundCloud devotee. My Kaspersky antivirus will be expiring shortly and I don't particularly care to renew with that steep of a fee — any advice from fellow thrifts?"
Windows: Microsoft Security Essentials, free if you have Microsoft Windows XP or higher, and it does work especially for the technical, not too adventerous link clicker. Gives you that extra layer of protection you seem to want for those 'oh shit' moments.
For a free, Windows antivirus, it is hard to beat. Not the greatest, but it works and updates automatically from windows update.
But if you're running Windows, you could actually do a lot worse than Microsoft Security Essentials...
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
One of the primary causes of malware is drive-by intrusion via compromised or unmaintained ad servers. Instead of worrying about free antivirus (which by definition rarely catches real 0-day threats), I'd get an ad blocker, or a utility like the paid version of Malwarebytes which blocks malicious website IPs.
Block the IPs and what spits out the malware, don't bother playing whack-a-mole against the latest polymorphic stuff.
As for antivirus, just go with MSE. It usually is in the middle of the pack, is lightweight, and the price is right.
I assume your on Windows and that MSE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Security_Essentials) is available. Seems to work fine for most and MS seems to have not made it a huge resource hog.
K Man
Avast. Used to use AVG, but Avast seems to work better.
I've always found
AVG Free http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage
or
Avira Free http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus
To be good free solutions.
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
As others have stated, MSE does a very good job. It easily outclasses the other freebies, and most of the non-free ones as well. For example, I've seen it clean up machines that got infested while under AVG's watch.
And it doesn't slow your machine down to a crawl, which is nice.
"...reasonably competent CPU user"
Using 'CPU' in this incorrect context is a pet peeve.
But anyway, MSE (as other have said) and AdBlocker and/or NoScript for your browser. Assuming you're using anything other than IE. If you're using IE switch to a better condom!
What the hell does that even mean? Do you mean computer?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You should be downvoted for the reasons stated below: 1. He said his budget is tight 2. He just bought a new Acer laptop 3. Macs do actually get viruses (though there are significantly less viruses for Mac OS X than for Windows) Short story shorter: You're a jerk.
First I used Avast, but after a while it began bugging me to to buy the paid version, and slowed down my PC with ill-timed, intensive scans.
I switched to AVG, but after a while it began bugging me to to buy the paid version, and slowed down my PC with ill-timed, intensive scans.
Now I use Microsoft Security Essentials, which is surprisingly good. So far.
Complement with a Spybot Search and Destroy scan every now and then and you're good to go.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
MSE is great, for the money, and its pretty light weight. I would add Secunia PSI to the list http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ It's also free and scans the computer for out of date and vulnerable software. Malwares Favorite place to get in is unpatched software. This includes stuff you installed once and forgot about, stuff that came with your computer that you never use, etc. A totally patched system (including all the forgotten about stuff) is the best way to stay clean in addition to the not clicking on random stuff. In addition, if you don't need it uninstall it. A good example of this is Java. Most people don't acutally need it but have it installed on their computers. Just get rid of it and then you don't have to worry if it's not a secure program. Soundcloud should be clean but it's all the other places to be concerned about.
Unfortunately, also doesn't do any resident background protection, network monitoring or link scanning, which all major antivirus tools do nowadays. The only reason to put ClamWin on a Windows machine if it is running 2000 or earlier, which is about the only current AV that will run on those systems.
It's not what you asked, but it's at least as important:
Keep good, usable, uninfected backups of anything that's important to you.
Also, have a means to restore your computer to a known good state and have the ability to re-install applications you want.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
while the list could use a refresh, may still be helpful http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388652,00.asp
Try to use a non-admin account for your daily stuff. An escalated admin account when you do need to install stuff is just 2 clicks away (start -> change user)
I've had my computer-illiterate parents on a non-admin account for 20 years now, they still haven't gotten a virus. And yes, they're still computer-illiterate ^^
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I agree, Linux. If you want to be free of viruses, buy a Mac or install Linux or BSD. Your AV isn't going to do a damned thing when you get hit by a zero-day exploit, and Windows is the only PC OS with viruses in the wild. Whoever modded the AC "troll" should never get mod points; it was insightful (as another moderator noted). If you're worried about viruses, you shouldn't be running Windows.
That said, there are vew actual viruses out there, most are trojans, so I don't worry too much about my W7 notebook. But I don't worry at all about my Linux tower.
Free Martian Whores!
Have you tried Common Sense 2012? I hear it works well in most sensible cases. Other than that on the cheap : Microsoft Security Essentials. It seems a bit contradictory to let MS handle anti-virus software, but at least it doesn't hog your system as badly as most other products.
reasonably competent CPU user
Yes, I know how you feel. I like to think of myself a I/O aficionado. I have a friend who's a memory expert. We know a guy who was pretty much a BIOS guru, but he's not feeling too well lately after hearing about the UEFI thing.
but I do download some music as a recent SoundCloud devotee
I hardly know anyone who downloads their music from SoundCloud. Most tracks are either demos (with a link to itunes, amazon, juno or whatever). And the few amateurs that are serious about their music have already joined one of the many netlabels where you can usually download entire albums from their own site or bandcamp.
Are you by any chance doing market research, trying to infiltrate into the tech crowd while looking young, hip, dynamic and social 2.0 web networking? You're doing a splendid job, I might add. However, please forgive my sarcasm if you're not, your post seems to read like a 55 year old police officer going under cover "buyin' da ganja mon, totally down with da 'erb an' ting".
Well, I'm certain your computing needs are identical to everyone else's.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Reading the other comments I remembered that ISPs sometimes provides A/V. I'm using Norton's latest Security Suite provided by Comcast (at no charge).
not because it's free, and not because I think it's way better - but because it's the least intrusive and annoying AV apps I've used ... I'm OK with no pop ups, task bar balloons, registration reminders or boot-up logos ...
Agree with everything (including him being a jerk), except for the virus point. Which is not to say that Macs cannot get them (they absolutely can), just that OS X hasn't had any yet that I'm aware of. All of their malware so far has been of the trojan variety, which is the simplest to make and the most difficult to protect against.
you realize that attitudes like yours and GPs are exactly what turns prospective linux neophytes off, right?
For an every-day user, Linux has just as many problems as windows. the problems are just completely different. Source: I use both linux and windows every day. typing this on a linux laptop for pete's sake.
For the OP's concerns, linux very well may be his best option, but telling him that he's been playing in the little kid's sandbox is very nearly as counterproductive as telling him that he's a retard, as GP did.
For the vast majority of people, Linux is a heap of useless trash. It's inconsistent. It has relatively poor hardware compatibility. It has no software compatibility for software that real people care about. There's basically no good reason for the average home user to touch it.
Good News: The free Microsoft AV (MSE) is basically as good as any product we looked at.
Bad News: All AV sucks to varying degrees. Noone consistently had both good detection and quick enough signature updates. We see AV as a small piece of overlapping defense.
At least as important:
- Relentless patching of everything on your box (look at Secuna PSI for home use).
- Use a non-admin account for daily computing. Consider using throw-away Windows VMs when visiting potentially dangerous territory.
- Ad/Flash/Script blockers plugins.
- Disable Java.
Things like this probably have as much bang-for-buck as AV.
This place really has gone down hill - 'first time submitter' wants to know what anti-virus to use. Information given:
I have a Acer laptop and I use SoundCloud.
Any hint to operating system? No. We will have to assume Windows then. Which is confirmed by the first post within a couple of minutes [where is the frosty piss post?] :
'Windows: Microsoft Security Essentials, free if you have Microsoft Windows XP or higher, and it does work especially for the technical, not too adventerous link clicker. Gives you that extra layer of protection you seem to want for those 'oh shit' moments.'
From an AC and modded 5 Informative.
News for nerds - stuff that matters. I remember them days well.
Feel free to join me over at hacker news.
Clam AntiVirus - http://www.clamav.net/
Granted it was ten years ago, but when I went to UNCC, there was a small selection of software provided by the school under a shared license for free to students. This included, in my case, norton corporate, which was not intrusive and did an admirable job. Might wanna check around and see if you have similar options available. While the best free AV might be MSE for Windows, you might be able to get a paid AV for free.
It is free and easy to use. It also seems to be easier on the resources than some other tools. However I have had it miss things that other programs found (and they were NOT false positives). I know of other people that have experienced this problem as well. I recently looked through some antivirus comparisons and MSSE really fell short on a few of those tests. If I remember correctly, one of these tests had MSSE fail to detect about 14%. I would look for other software.
--
If a person gives their two cents on an argument, does inflation make their opinion worth less?
http://av-comparatives.org/
This tests a lot of antivirus and shows you their detection rate, false-positive rate, etc.
I myself promote Avira Antivir, which is lightweight, does well on AV-Comparatives.org, and is gratis.
Of course, the best solution is to install Ubuntu; if you choose it, I can give you free support over email.
And remember: any Windows antivirus (even, to a lesser degree, Ubuntu) will only attenuate the problem. You are _not_ safe just because you have a good antivirus (or run Ubuntu). You _must_ take care: don't go to rogue sites, don't execute untrusted executables, don't use pirated software, etc.
Good luck.
Is that it updates itself via Windows update. So should it fail to get a virus database update internally, Windows update will fix it. If there's a new version, Windows update will get it. Very good for people who just don't want to mind after the program.
That said, I think there are pay for solutions that are better (NOD32 is what I like) but if you want free, it works great.
"...make sure that my recent investment in an Acer laptop will last me a good long while"
Huh? Please don't tell me that you're one of those people who think that once a computer gets infected with malware that it has to be thrown out. Wipe the hard drive (or replace it if you want to be super-thorough) and reload the OS, apps, and data. Presto: investment salvaged.
In fact, you might want to do this from time to time even if your computer doesn't get properly infected, because Windows (and to a lesser extent other OSes) build up performance-sucking cruft over time as you use them. I refurb the "retired" laptops before my employer sells them off, and the people who buy their old ones are often surprised at how fast they run after a clean reinstall of Windows.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Where is my mycleanpc spam?
While clearly not an anti-malware program.... run Firefox with No-Script and let it block all links on any given webpage, with you allowing or temporarily allowing specific sites on an as-needed basis. This should prevent cross-site scripting attacks. Free, easy to manage, etc. But yes, you also want MSE or another active anti-malware program in addition to this.
I disagree, but I'm much closer to your opinion than the two hopeless fanboys that posted earlier.
Full disclosure, I use Linux in a professional environment. We use it to run wifi hardware, and in LAMP configurations for websites. Personally, I have used Linux off and on for the past six years, and Windows since it existed.
For the combination of low resource overhead and stability, Linux (CentOS in our case) beat Windows hands-down for the hardware that we sell to clients. We need something that will act as a router, bridge, or access point, so we need it to stay up and running for as long as possible. We don't upgrade hardware often, so as long as it works when it's installed it'll probably be fine, and we don't need to update the OS for the same reason.
In all other regards, Linux has been at best something that we can work around, and at worst a hindrance.
In 2012, being limited to a command line is archaic and counter-productive, so a user should be able to accomplish most if not all tasks from within a GUI. We can argue about command line interfaces and how 1337sauce they are all day, but the fact that all serious OSs on the market, including Linux, incorporate GUIs tends to indicate that moving away from command lines considered a good move by people that design and develop operating systems. It might be faster for people who are used to it to live in the command line, but the overwhelming majority of users want GUIs that provide all the functionality they need, and people who are in the business of making operating systems respond to this. And, overall, if the GUI is well-designed, it's generally more efficient than the command line. My opinion, yes, but I'll argue it all day.
Any security gains in Linux (and there certainly are) are mitigated by the obscurity of the system itself. Yes, you can batten down a Linux installation to a level of security you don't see with MS if you know what you're doing. The problem is that you have to have a high level of comfort and expertise with the OS to see these benefits; you can realize at least base-line security on a Windows machine without having to know anything about IPTABLES. It's like the classic martial arts dilemma: Chinese boxing might be superior to all other martial arts, but it takes decades to achieve mastery; a student of Krav Maga or jujitsu can become competent in a few years.
At our office I and another person write the documentation. With Open Office, we ran into formatting issues that, frankly, made it impossible to produce a professional-looking document. Even the person who'd been doing the documentation before, who is a self-described "Linux guy", admitted that he'd reached the limits of what could be done with OOo, and recommended I use Wine to install Office. This required that I switch distros, because CentOS doesn't support the latest version of Wine, which was required to install Office 2010 (a copy of which had already been purchased for a previous employee). Admittedly, the alternative was to install some flavor of Windows on a VM, but that would've required buying a license; I work at a very small company where cost is always an issue. Eventually, after some tweaking, I got Wine to install Office and launch it reliably, although there are stability issues.
As a gamer, too, I can speak to Wine and Linux in home applications. Yes, some games run under Wine. Certainly not all, and not even most. Also, big releases, especially multiplayer games, remain the province of Windows. It's changing, slowly, and Steam going to Linux is a promising development, but a PC running Windows remains the best platform for gaming. And, sure, you can run a VM, but then you're adding to hardware requirements that new releases already stretch on most PCs.
I know it's sort of de rigeur to hate Windows if you like Linux, but it's not the 1990s. Linux has come a long way, especially Ubuntu, and I think the argument can be made that some distros are no longer "hobbyist" OSs, but Windows remains the authoritative PC operat
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For my business clients that have to use Windows, I've had good experiences with installing Linux on the machine, then installing Virtualbox, then installing Windows within Virtualbox. When (not if) Windows gets a virus, I have them roll back to the last good snapshot. The virus goes away when the rollback occurs.
This won't work if you want to play games, of course. But for pure business use, it's been successful.
I'm sure others have said it. Probably just spam to this discussion but it's a great anti virus.
"Facts" mentioned in parent post are five-plus years out of date.
Talking about Linux versus Windows is pretty much like talking about aircraft versus Chevrolet sedans. There are as many variants of Linux as there are different kinds of aircraft, so there are not many generalized comparisons that can be made between all of them and Windows. Just like it is hard to find a general comparison between Chevies and (fighter jets/helicopters/bush planes/cargo planes).
Of the several Linux distros that are directly comparable with Windows in the college student setting, Ubuntu is probably the best known. It is more secure than Windows, easier to administer than Windows, recognizes most peripherals, and is just generally better than Windows all the way around. One caveat is that its current default desktop environment (DE) is Unity, which is still having some teething problems. However unlike Windows, it is possible to change the DE quite easily. There is a Gnome or KDE variant for every user's work style.
The most important thing about Ubuntu, though, is that there are now Ubuntu communities in every college setting. The new user will have no trouble finding someone to help them set up their machine for the stuff they want to do. This is very different from the Windows model, where there most common form of "expertise" is the salesperson who knows just which $125 software package will do exactly what you want, and by the way, did you know that if you buy this $300 foot pedal and steering yoke peripheral you can drive quickly through all your spreadsheet chores?
I just thought of one way in which aircraft can be compared with Chevies. Aircraft are generally well built with hundreds of different experts examining each piece to make sure they all work properly together. Chevies? Not so much. Same thing between Linux distros and Windows.
Of course if the important thing is playing games rather than the studies, then certainly Windows is the way to go.
Will
I don't mean "use Linux", which has already been suggested a number of times, predictably. I mean no antivirus installed whatsoever, and do the following:
- Before you run any binaries and otherwise infectable files you download, run them through an online antivirus (e.g. ESET).
- In Explorer, don't generate thumbnails.
- services.msc and disable everything you don't need
- Run a firewall. Even a basic one will do.
- Don't use IE or Outlook.
That's how I roll, and I know for a fact I haven't had a virus for about a decade. I'm absolutely positive the machine isn't in a botnet or anything of that sort because I regularly monitor my traffic in the router. If I had a virus I almost certainly wouldn't be able to browse to ESET online or any other antivirus site. Finally ESET online also scans the RAM.
Facts mentioned in this post are 5 years in the future because the Linux experience you describe does not exist. Easier to administer than Windows. Fuck off. "It is possible to change the DE easily". Fuck off. I've been waiting 3 hours for lubuntu-desktop to install dozens of unnecessary packages for me and now it's failed and refuses to give me LXDE. That's not a five years in the past out of date blah di blah di fanboi. That's just happened. Right this second. Linux has been going backwards for ages. It used to be really lean and reliable. Now it's festooned with pointless bloat that is poorly tested and annoyingly slow and unreliable. If they wanted to duplicate the Vista experience they've done it. Otherwise you are pretending that you didn't have to dick about with the damn thing for ages to get to a level of functionality that is out of the box on Windows 7 or Mac OS.
The only thing AV provides is a false sense of security. With AV, you're waiting until AFTER an infection occurs and then HOPING the AV company you've chosen has A) seen the malware before, B) bothered to add a signature to their definitions list, and C) is actually capable of removing the virus.
Better ideas: Turning on AppLocker & running most of the time as an unprivileged user. Check out OSSEC for use as a File Integrity Monitor and Host-based Intrusion Detection System. Disable unnecessary services, remove unnecessary programs, use an ad-blocker, a "default deny all" firewall policy and get a 3rd party patch manager to keep all your non-MS bits up to date. Secunia PSI is a free patch manager/vuln scanner for home use - there are others.
For a detailed description of just how bad AV is at protecting systems, check out the following blog post at computer-forensics.sans.org:
http://computer-forensics.sans.org/blog/2012/04/09/is-anti-virus-really-dead-a-real-world-simulation-created-for-forensic-data-yields-surprising-results
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