How many of these antivirus/malware programs should I keep running?

[WAZ]

So I just finished cleaning a nasty virus/malware infection (52 infections, to be exact) off my mother-in-law's computer. She's 65 and enjoys downloading "free" arcade/puzzle games. You know, those little animated garbage games that almost always come with adware.

She has ESET NOD32 as her antivirus, AdAware also running, and her Windows Firewall is on. I got the porn-launching virus removed via a combination of scans with Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware, AdAware, NOD32, Avast!, and Windows Defender.

A lot of these come with system-tray-resident monitoring programs. After various restarts there are now, I think, 4 or 5 different protection/monitors running from the list above. I know multiple antivirus software can have conflicts but I wasn't sure about these other malware/adware monitors. Which combination of these should I keep running, and which should I disable (to prevent conflicts or inhibiting the other programs, etc)?

Thanks!

 

[FortressDewey]

Why not run the Windows Essentials Security, it's free and seems to be pretty decent. It isn't a complete system hog when it's running.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

You should only need 1 of each. An antivirus and a spyware/malware remover. I always deploy using AVG 9 Free and Windows Defender. I use Ccleaner to manage startups and such.

 

[Udgnim]

switch browser to Chrome

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

If you have more than one you may have false positive issues. Some Virus directories of one program will show up for other antivirus programs.

 

[gammaray]

If you visit trusted websites and you do not visit porn, torrents and other "unsafe" websites, you don't even need an anti-virus.

In 5 years i never installed an anti-virus. It keeps your computer much faster too.

 

[Binky]

Make an image of the system in a clean state and let mom/granny go nuts. When she screws it up (she will, no matter what you do...), just restore the image, do all the windows and program updates since the last image, and she's good to go for another X years.

You can't save her, but you can make it easier on yourself to restore her quickly.

 

[hypn05]

I only have 1 each on resident:
1 for anti virus - avast
1 for spyware remover - spyware blaster
1 firewall - comodo

+ malwarebytes - free only on demand
These should be enough.

 

[JackBurton]

The reason you are having these problems is because she is running with admin rights. Set her up with basic users rights, turn Windows updates on and set it to automatically install and make sure NOD32 stays up to date. That's it. It should be pretty clean after that. If she does happen to get infected again, just rename her Windows profile and have her log in again. Auto clean system.

 

[Rottie]

she is 65 year old and she really like porno??? how did she find out about porno???

 

[pcgeek11]

If you visit trusted websites and you do not visit porn, torrents and other "unsafe" websites, you don't even need an anti-virus.

In 5 years i never installed an anti-virus. It keeps your computer much faster too.

This is entirely NOT TRUE. Even legit/trusted web sites can be hacked and have drive by virus, infections, malware get all in you before you even know it is there.

pcgeek11

 

[Jetster...]

I use
One anti-virus Kasperski
One firewall a router

And thats it..............smart surfing ..educate her about downloads that are free and buy her some games

AVG Free or Avast Free are fine for antivirus. An occational scan with spybot or awarare are also fine but then delete the program.

 

[Jetster...]

This is entirely NOT TRUE. Even legit/trusted web sites can be hacked and have drive by virus, infections, malware get all in you before you even know it is there.

pcgeek11

What kind of "legit/trusted sites" do you visit?

You remined me of the tech that told me that no matter what you do they can find a way in. I just though he wasnt that good. But I would not recomend not using an anti-virus

 

[Rubycon]

Make sure all your plugins (java, flash, acrobat, quicktime, etc.) are UP TO DATE!
Use Firefox or similar with noscript.
Use a rule on email clients that automatically bin emails NOT on your safe list. Turn off auto preview if using Outlook, etc.

Most attacks from LEGIT sites come from advertising that's running on them. These banners may be running on compromised servers and will get you if your flash is out of date, etc. Forbidding scripts to run everywhere (i.e. noscript) will take care of this.

 

[jkroeder]

What kind of "legit/trusted sites" do you visit?

You remined me of the tech that told me that no matter what you do they can find a way in. I just though he wasnt that good. But I would not recomend not using an anti-virus

he's right. SQL injection infected sites pop up all the time. I'd say infected ad banners are more of a threat though.

 

[gammaray]

This is entirely NOT TRUE. Even legit/trusted web sites can be hacked and have drive by virus, infections, malware get all in you before you even know it is there.

pcgeek11

Let me know next time your anti-virus says it prevented a virus from www.anandtech.com and i'll make sure to install one.

 

[tzdk]

May be best to think out of the box with a 65 year old. Keep AV but don't expect her to be able to navigate internet safely or that software is all she needs. So WOT or DynDNS Internet Guide is more useful than anti-spyware on top of ESET. Then not so much need to be limited user = easier for he who has to help her... If WOT prevents downloading a "puzzle" game then too bad

Use TeamViewer to log in to her computer from time to time and make sure Flash, Java, Pdf and similar important stuf is always updated. There are many exploits around but most do not work that well if user can manage to update! Use Secunia to scan online http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/online

May be also help her find sites with those games. Give her some safe bookmarks. Doing a google search and jumping at random links can be risky regardless of keywords. She have no idea what is "trusted" so will need WOT or similar tool. Browser filters are good but not enough if she is clickhappy.

Firefox with Adblock Plus is a good idea but forget about NoScript and other paranoid tools. They are not needed and will only complicate things for her. If used to IE she probably wont switch anyway and not like IE8 users are in great danger without all those Firefox gadgets... Ads can't be trusted though but WOT will take care of the worst.

Unless her Email provider is as good/safe as Gmail change to Google. Most likely it is not. Gmail has very good spam filters and no effort required on hers or your part. Check out her emails. Does she subscribe to some dodgy "download this new game" type of mailing list? Look for sources of problems.

 

[WAZ]

Thanks for the tips. I'm leaving it with Eset Antivirus and Spyware Blocker; though by the reviews I may buy Malwarebytes to monitor, or go back to Lavasoft AdAware. Either way, I've disabled all the other monitors which installed while running these scans.

I also ran ccleaner and Auslogics Registry Cleaner, defragged, and changed the account from admin to regular user. All my scans are coming up clean now, and while the system was locking up on me for a little while there, I think that's under control now too. And does WOT run on top of the antimalware (SpywareBlaster, AdAware, or Malwarebytes) I have running? Or instead of?

For the record, no, it was not from a porn site ; but the trojan kept auto-launching porn sites in IE8. I found some gibberish-named .exe buried in her Application Data folder. She uses Firefox (I changed out her desktop icons, etc to "hide" IE a while back) but does install adware-laden "free" games. The adware scans came up with stuff from iWin.com, Freeze.com, and some others. I don't know if one of those directly did it, but a combination of those (and the general browsing habits that get you those, and the adware/popup-plentiful sites they're on) and maybe something that slipped through NOD32 in her email (Comcast email in Outlook) probably did the trick.

We'll be buying her some more disc-based games (we already DO; she just still likes to go out and find her own little arcade games anyway), but now insist that she not go downloading that junk. Hopefully the beefed up security blocks it anyway.

 

[tzdk]

WOT is just a browser plugin for IE, firefox, Chrome? so can work with anything else. I think it will be really good at blocking the type of sites she likes Easier if you tried it out, plugin is flexible. Can be loud or invisible. If I were you I would set it to only react on red sites. Not as good then but will she understand dif. between half-yellow and light-red? Is there a dif.? Is she prepared to research, check out whatever? False positive or not? A mess and I guess not. So since we can assume all reds are to be blocked that is a foolproof setting. Some FPs perhaps but how it is. She can always ignore warning/block but if she does that every time there is no hope, heh. Malwarebytes paid version does not block as much as WOT but of course has other features. Even more transparent with blocking, just blocks! She will be able to handle that one easy and license is lifetime - as if program needed more advertising... Is good though.

Some task to protect against any "FREE" offer on the internet but much can be done.

 

[Fayd]

This is entirely NOT TRUE. Even legit/trusted web sites can be hacked and have drive by virus, infections, malware get all in you before you even know it is there.

pcgeek11

yeah, and it's not like a decent security suite is a real resource hog either. if you have enough RAM in your system and the security suite isnt fucking up (like norton 2008 or something..) then it's pretty much unnoticeable. if you leave the computer on 24/7, then you set scanning for the middle of the night. what's it matter?

 

[pcgeek11]

Let me know next time your anti-virus says it prevented a virus from www.anandtech.com and i'll make sure to install one.

Well I said nothing about getting a virus from Anandtech... ?

But you can get as stated above "Injected" by just loading a web site. No user interaction required. Go ahead and run without it, It is your choice to run without it. Hell you can get infected with an antivirus but the odds are much much smaller.

pcgeek11

 

[pcgeek11]

What kind of "legit/trusted sites" do you visit?

You remined me of the tech that told me that no matter what you do they can find a way in. I just though he wasnt that good. But I would not recomend not using an anti-virus

Nothing is foolproof. Nothing.

pcgeek11

 

[Modelworks]

Nothing is foolproof. Nothing.

pcgeek11

Not foolproof but very close. Install sandboxie and set it up so that the browser must always run inside it along with email and any other online application she uses. Sandboxie puts applications inside a box making it so they cannot access anything outside the box without express permission to do so.

Something corrupts the browser with adware/spyware, you just close the browser. When you open it again it is just like when you set it up , the changes are gone.


This is what MS should have done instead of UAC.
http://www.sandboxie.com/

 

[Jetster...]

People that click on banners should not be allowed to be on the internet. They could have a test and keeps poping up interesting banners like (get a french made for a month) or (free masages) and if you clicked on it you dont get your license. But hten again if people were smart there would be no payday loans, furniture rental, car leases, pay check cashing stores or change exchage machines.

 

[pcgeek11]

People that click on banners should not be allowed to be on the internet. They could have a test and keeps poping up interesting banners like (get a french made for a month) or (free masages) and if you clicked on it you dont get your license. But hten again if people were smart there would be no payday loans, furniture rental, car leases, pay check cashing stores or change exchage machines.

You miss the point again:

For an SQL Injection Infection you do not have to click or select anything.

pcgeek11