I've never had problems with NAV, but AVG let me download and even save the Klez virus from an email. I switched to Avast after that and it managed to catch the rest of the Klez emails that I was getting. I'm using Norton now though.
Why would you want to download and save emails with the Klez virus? Aren't you safe if you just DELETE unknown emails?
soundforbjt
Lifer
- Feb 15, 2002
- 17,788
- 6,040
- 136
Another vote for Avast 4 here. Best anti-virus I've ever used. And free to boot! Norton's good, but too big of a resource hog.
Panda killed my system. Yes, I had a bad virus, but that stupid program went and deleted many of my files while telling me the whole time that it was "disinfecting" them. Will never use it again.
Being smart about what you click on or open is one of the best ways to safeguard against viruses. Sure, it doesn't protect you from 100% of the stuff that is out there (especially if someone intentionally hoses your computer), but so far I haven't had any viruses on my computer and have been without av software for 5+ years. The main reason why I don't like antivirus software is because it gets in the way all the time.
How in the heck do people get so many viruses? I have never had a single virus on any computer I've owned my entire life. Never even used antivirus software until I wanted to specifically scan a few things I got from suspect sources a little over a year ago, and just haven't taken it off since.
Do people really download and execute things that get sent to them from "Bill Gates" and "Your old pal from school"??
j
Do people really download and execute things that get sent to them from "Bill Gates" and "Your old pal from school"??
j
I run a virus scanner (AVP) just to be safe but the BEST virus scanner (and it's free) is common sense... Although most people don't have enough common sense to realize that emails from "Bill Gates" are bogus unless you work for Microsoft and even then I doubt he sends emails to his employees..
AVG will not prevent a virus from coming in over a network connection. I've also seen instances where it has detected a virus infection that occured while it was running and it was powerless to remove it. It's free and that's exactly what it's worth. If you have valuable data I suggest you look elsewhere for virus protection.
avg is not such a hot deal, contrary to popular opinion. there are reported problems downloading updates, getting the registration key, and extremely poor results in virus tests. see for yourself: http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archives/products.xml?avg.xml
when it comes to security, don't go cheap - unless your time and data is of so little value to you, that you rather take the risk of losing your data and spending hours reinstalling than spending $40 for a decent av program such as nod32.
when it comes to security, don't go cheap - unless your time and data is of so little value to you, that you rather take the risk of losing your data and spending hours reinstalling than spending $40 for a decent av program such as nod32.
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,566
- 10,181
- 126
I'm with you, wviperw, resident AV software is too much overhead, and isn't fully effective anyways, against new viruses. Much better to adapt a "best practices" strategy, to remove or greatly reduce the risk altogether, rather than just try to mitigate it with high-overhead scanning software.
Texun
Platinum Member
- Oct 21, 2001
- 2,058
- 1
- 81
I use AVG but don't care for the fact that, if a virus is found during a scan it asks me to run AVG again to remove it. This should be an option that is provided *during* the scan, but it asks me to run AVG again to clean it. If it has the option to clean or prompt on the initial scan I haven't seen it.
Also- it doesn't seem all that great in cleaning the file. Quite often it reports that it cannot clean the file and asks to remove it to the virus vault, so I then go on-line with Trend Micro's Houscall which usually cleans the file instead of asking me to delete it. I'm not complaining, it's worth the price I paid but I don't trust it 100% which is why I usually compare any hits with Trend Micro.
Also- it doesn't seem all that great in cleaning the file. Quite often it reports that it cannot clean the file and asks to remove it to the virus vault, so I then go on-line with Trend Micro's Houscall which usually cleans the file instead of asking me to delete it. I'm not complaining, it's worth the price I paid but I don't trust it 100% which is why I usually compare any hits with Trend Micro.
It's only "overhead" if you allow it to be. It's not necessary to have an antivirus program run constantly as a background app for it to be effective. Every so often do a manual scan for viruses. Disable auto-protect features altogether. I to "adapt a best practices strategy" and have remained virus free 5+ years myself. Even so, it's important to do manual scans as well as it's better to be safe than sorry.
I agree with several of the posters above about adapting a "best practices strategy". Run a tight firewall with a DMZ, ditch outlook express and IE in favor of something more secure such as Eudora or Opera(better yet run linux),update the security holes in your OS and software, don't open attachments you didn't ask for and scan every downloaded file. Running an AV program in the background is mostly worthless since the updates aren't written until the virus is already detected in the wild. Sort of like putting on a condom after the fact. Add to that, the myriad of problems that AV programs seem to cause with program installations and updates when they run constantly in the background. Just my 2 cents.
RE:"How in the heck do people get so many viruses? I have never had a single virus on any computer I've owned my entire life. Never even used antivirus software until I wanted to specifically scan a few things I got from suspect sources a little over a year ago, and just haven't taken it off since."
I'm generally pretty cautious but I got about 20 viruses last month. Manily backdoor trojans and a couple of worms. You know, the ones that take over your computer and use it to launch denial of service attacks over the net or steal your passwords and credit card numbers via keystrokes.
Unfortunately, Norton didn't find them until they already were on the computer and in most cases could do nothing when them other than delete. As soon as I deleted them, some would reappear, sometimes new ones. Apparently there was a program running on the computer that was inviting them in and Norton wasn't finding it. I also used a program called "THE CLEANER" from moosoft which found at least one TROJAN that NORTON did not find.
Then I brought in the big guns with a trojan cleaner Called TDS-3. This is the cat's a$$ for finding trojans. It found a couple of programs that were MASKING the trojans that were operating on the computer...there were two programs running that were hiding the other trojans. One was called hiddenrun.exe and the other was hide32.exe. After I removed them I found another trojan that had bee masked and when I removed that everything got cleaned up.
So whats the moral(s) of the story?
1. Don't expect Norton AV or any other AV to find all viruses.
It simply does not. To tell you the truth McAffee is better. At least they knew about the hiddenrun.exe file.
2. Even if you update your defintions that doesn't mean
your safe. Sometimes new viruses take months before Norton etc. add them to the defititions.
3. Statements like "I haven't run an AV on my computer for years and I've never had a virus" are just plain ludicrous. How in the world would you know your not infected if you've never run an AV?
4. Even if you run an AV like Norton you need to run a trojan cleaner like "TDS-3" or "the cleaner". I also recommend WORMGUARD by the same company that makes "TDS-3".
How do you protect your computer?
1. BUY A ROUTER! It's a natural firewall (incoming)
2. Run a software firewall like ZONE alarm. WHy do you need both? Because Zone Alarm will tell you what's OUTGOING and phoning home or sending out info on you.
3. RUN an updated AV in the background.
4. Run a TrojanCleaner just in case, or just once in a while. WormGuard is great too.
5. Run Spybot or Adaware pro to keep your computer clean. You can also block spyware with those programs.
Overkill? Not really. Just run ZoneAlarm without a router and see all the probing of your computer that's going on and see whos actually phoning home off your computer.
Get a trace program like VisualRoute or Neotrace and trace some of these probes on your computer. You'll be shocked. Iran, China, Korea, Angola, Zaire...
I'm generally pretty cautious but I got about 20 viruses last month. Manily backdoor trojans and a couple of worms. You know, the ones that take over your computer and use it to launch denial of service attacks over the net or steal your passwords and credit card numbers via keystrokes.
Unfortunately, Norton didn't find them until they already were on the computer and in most cases could do nothing when them other than delete. As soon as I deleted them, some would reappear, sometimes new ones. Apparently there was a program running on the computer that was inviting them in and Norton wasn't finding it. I also used a program called "THE CLEANER" from moosoft which found at least one TROJAN that NORTON did not find.
Then I brought in the big guns with a trojan cleaner Called TDS-3. This is the cat's a$$ for finding trojans. It found a couple of programs that were MASKING the trojans that were operating on the computer...there were two programs running that were hiding the other trojans. One was called hiddenrun.exe and the other was hide32.exe. After I removed them I found another trojan that had bee masked and when I removed that everything got cleaned up.
So whats the moral(s) of the story?
1. Don't expect Norton AV or any other AV to find all viruses.
It simply does not. To tell you the truth McAffee is better. At least they knew about the hiddenrun.exe file.
2. Even if you update your defintions that doesn't mean
your safe. Sometimes new viruses take months before Norton etc. add them to the defititions.
3. Statements like "I haven't run an AV on my computer for years and I've never had a virus" are just plain ludicrous. How in the world would you know your not infected if you've never run an AV?
4. Even if you run an AV like Norton you need to run a trojan cleaner like "TDS-3" or "the cleaner". I also recommend WORMGUARD by the same company that makes "TDS-3".
How do you protect your computer?
1. BUY A ROUTER! It's a natural firewall (incoming)
2. Run a software firewall like ZONE alarm. WHy do you need both? Because Zone Alarm will tell you what's OUTGOING and phoning home or sending out info on you.
3. RUN an updated AV in the background.
4. Run a TrojanCleaner just in case, or just once in a while. WormGuard is great too.
5. Run Spybot or Adaware pro to keep your computer clean. You can also block spyware with those programs.
Overkill? Not really. Just run ZoneAlarm without a router and see all the probing of your computer that's going on and see whos actually phoning home off your computer.
Get a trace program like VisualRoute or Neotrace and trace some of these probes on your computer. You'll be shocked. Iran, China, Korea, Angola, Zaire...
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