What Anti-Virus do you Use/Recommend?

[narayanaswamy]

now i'm using kaspersky and i think its doing a very good job.it has got very much options so that u can set it according to ur need....but if u prefer for a free one i would recommend avira antivir...

[eyeball]

now i'm using kaspersky and i think its doing a very good job.it has got very much options so that u can set it according to ur need....but if u prefer for a free one i would recommend avira antivir...

Good Man!

[MrCobra]

NOD32 along with ThreatFire.

[ilko_t]

Was PC field engineer for 4-5 years, in IT for more than 15, perhaps 80% of the jobs were malware on PCs with the bloated preinstalled Norton and McAfee. Number of jobs due to Norton AV screwing Secure web pages, for some reason unregistering a few DLLs, leading to empty pages and non-working applets such as System Restore, Search etc etc. Thank you Symantec and McAfee, you have brought so many clients...

NOD32- useless in my opinion. I have seen so many PCs, where it's real-time scanner missed viruses, but on manual scan it finds them as such, properly configured, licensed versions...Are people really attracted by it's small footprint? Or what? I really wonder where all the noise about NOD comes from...

One of the sites, which happens to cover exactly my observations, have a look at the tests- http://www.virus.gr/portal/en/

To declare- I am not associated with it in any way, it just repeats my observations during the years. And this is for detection rates, how well the malware is cleaned and how well the real-time scanner protects itself and blocks the malware before it gets installed is another story, and in my opinion KAV is unbeatable last few years.

Another point- I often find new undetected malware (scan at virusscan.jotti.org or virustotal.com) and send them to a few famous AV vendors. KAV usually replies within an hour and within 2-3 hours signatures are updated for the examples I had sent. DrWeb has the same response time.

Symantec- since first 5 times I got no answer I stopped sending them. McAfee- first few samples answer was received between 2 and 4 weeks.

TrendMicro- 5 weeks on the first 2 and I stopped sending them as well.

NOD was not among those and cannot comment in this aspect.

Get serious.

Buy KAV B)

Exactly.

[sternkanz]

My choice is definitely AntiVir, its lightweight enough, it has a simple interface, and it has one of the highest detection rates of any AV (NB I do not say highest because detection rates are based on particular test data, some AV comparisons are biased with virii/trojans known to detect better on one AV or other).

Also, what I really really like about AntiVir is that it hasn't tried to do -everything- like lots of AV/Firewall/Anti-Spyware developers seem to be doing. When I want an AV program, I want an AV program, not an AV program with crappy anti-spyware attachments.

I use AntiVir for AV,

Spywareblaster, Spybot S&D and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware for anti-spyware (not ad-aware because the new version sucks)

Zonealarm for firewall.

I run a limited user account on Windows - this is one of the most best ways you can help protect your computer, and I keep up to date with all of my software.

Here is a great blog for keeping up to date with security announcements: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/

And here is a great link to a software update checker: http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/

Best advice:

Run limited user account

Always uninstall old (unsecure) versions of software before updating to new

Do not use IE (except for Windows updates on Windows XP)

Use Noscript and Adblockplus plugins for Firefox

Browse carefully

Edited October 9, 2008 by sternkanz

[eyeball]

My choice is definitely AntiVir, its lightweight enough, it has a simple interface, and it has one of the highest detection rates of any AV (NB I do not say highest because detection rates are based on particular test data, some AV comparisons are biased with virii/trojans known to detect better on one AV or other).

Also, what I really really like about AntiVir is that it hasn't tried to do -everything- like lots of AV/Firewall/Anti-Spyware developers seem to be doing. When I want an AV program, I want an AV program, not an AV program with crappy anti-spyware attachments.

I use AntiVir for AV,

Spywareblaster and Spybot SD for anti-spyware (not ad-aware because the new version sucks)

Zonealarm for firewall.

I run a limited user account on Windows - this is one of the most best ways you can help protect your computer, and I keep up to date with all of my software.

Here is a great blog for keeping up to date with security announcements: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/

And here is a great link to a software update checker: http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/

Best advice:

Run limited user account

Always uninstall old (unsecure) versions of software before updating to new

Do not use IE

Use Noscript and Adblockplus plugins for Firefox

Browse carefully

Well said Sir!

[sternkanz]

I've got to add to my list of recommendations Malware bytes Anti-Malware. My sisters computer recently had an infection of several trojans and spyware programs and Anti-Malware was able to remove them properly during startup. I wish Spybot S&D and more AV programs had a feature like this. I've edited my post.

[nullbyte]

I use Avast! Home Edition Is perfect for me.

[adrian2055]

Don't know if I posted on this topic, but If I did I'll post again. Most people hate the one I use, but I personally like panda antivirus. It works great for me. Some people say that It slows their systems down, but I don't have any problems with it and my system doesn't run slow. I've used it on several computers and never had a problem.

[Mousum]

What do you guys say about Nav 2009?

[LordWarlock]

Compared to previous versions, NAV 2009 is great, they fixed most of the glitches and it has a completely new installer/uninstaller that actually works, it still leaves behind some traces on uninstall, but nothing that would break your system. Detection rate is among the best and resource usage was also lowered, but it's still more on the heavy side.

Re NOD32:

Forget about it, it still has excelent detection rates, but once something slips past it, it's useless, can't remove most of the current viruses and forget about any protection against rootkits. They need to come up with a new engine that would be able to handle current forms of malware. In the past few weeks I had to clean a lot of PCs with NOD that had been completely taken over by some variant of Vundo/Virtumonde that used rootkit to hide part of its files, NOD was able to detect and remove the visible files, but could not remove the hidden part, so the virus always reinstalled itself. In the end I cleaned it using the standalone antirootkit tool from avast (you can find it on their beta forums), they use the same engine in latests builds of 4.8 version of their antivirus (and unlike the standalone tool, it's not beta anymore), so if avast was installed on those machines, it would be able to clean it.

Just for reference : Treatment of active infections (use google translation)

[ben100014]

You may think that I am an insolent snot after posting that rant about Panda Anti-Virus. That was in the day where I was precocious and boisterous. On behalf of myself, I must say that I Am truly embarrassed and apologize. Today, I now use Trend Micro Anti-Virus, it does not have incessant pop-ups and has a fairly accurate scanning program. It is a tremendous step up from Panda. To be perfectly I recommend Trend_micro ANti-Virus to small business owners for basic at-home use.

[WangoTango]

Avast - It's reliable with frequent updates. Plus it's free and was ten times faster than ClamAv which took over an hour to scan my hard drive. It took less than 10 minutes with Avast.

[leadboots5]

loving the new nav 2009. i think the post should be remade anew like yearly or biyearly

[x-Shadow-x]

NOD32 all the way (ESET). Detects everything it comes accross (even stopes you from entering viral websites).