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Security Software

Never trust McAfee and Norton...Not only do they take your money and bog down your computer, they don't even do the job they're supposed to...

This times a million. I almost want to print out something explaining this so I don't have to explain over and over when I fix people's computers why I'm throwing away the antivirus they just paid 80 bucks for.
 
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This times a million. I almost want to print out something explaining this so I don't have to explain over and over when I fix people's computers why I'm throwing away the antivirus they just paid 80 bucks for.
yup
and my father insists on keepin and renewin his McAffee because it "was the one that came with the computer"
sigh
 
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Never trust McAfee and Norton...Not only do they take your money and bog down your computer, they don't even do the job they're supposed to...
.

You think they're bad?...

Meet Qihoo 360...
http://www.360.cn/
...beyond doubt the worse AV suite I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. It's standard on just about all PCs here.
 
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I go with M$ Security Essentials and Malwarebytes' AntiMalware. Never do me wrong.

Malwarebytes is, IMO, the BEST software to take care of viruses....I've only come across maybe a handful of computer viruses that could not be cleaned with MWB.

Sec Essentials on the other hand, I find really bad. It has never found a virus on any of the computers that I've cleaned. I've been having to install it on student, faculty, and staff computers for the past 5 months (I work for IT at the college I attend)....I find that it also does a bad job of preventing them as well....

You think they're bad?...

Meet Qihoo 360...
360
 
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Ahahaha, that sucks, sorry man. Had Chrome translate that page for me ;), it looks realllyyyyyyyy bad...

Oh don't worry about me. I only use my own computers and the school provided office PC. Here I've removed this 'Qihoo 360' pseudo AV adware/spyware garbage.

I've seen PCs with '360 Safeguard' along with the ubiquitous IE6, get infected faster and easier than I can say 'Chinese botnet'. :mad: Put it this way, do not even think about doing online banking in a Chinese internet bar.
 
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Never trust McAfee and Norton...Not only do they take your money and bog down your computer, they don't even do the job they're supposed to...

Personally I do not have any experience with Avast but I swear by AVG Free. It is extremely well as an anti-virus and light on resources.

AVG Light on resources? Are you kidding? Wow.. If you think that, then I urge you to try Avast... You'll be quite surprised at how many more resources are being using by AVG than you thought...
 
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As far as Antivirus programs go; MS Essentials and Avira (paid version) are the best imho. I've run MS Essentials on my main computer at home for over a year now and it has caught malicious websites that were carelessly opened by a certain family member. Stay far away from Norton and McAfee, I haven't touched that software in 10+ years, it's bloatware and not needed. I don't bother with any other software as my Cisco router has IPS which kills most of the nasty stuff before it even hits the computer.
 
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Well I see that Norton & McAfee are out of the running.:) Of the folks that have chimed in, it seems Avast is the most popular and I like free.:)

Sec Essentials on the other hand, I find really bad. It has never found a virus on any of the computers that I've cleaned. I've been having to install it on student, faculty, and staff computers for the past 5 months (I work for IT at the college I attend)....I find that it also does a bad job of preventing them as well....

I haven't cleaned my laptop in a very long time also. I was thinking of wiping the hard drive and reloading everything. That's a lot of work and I'm thinking that you folks that do that for a living have a better way of doing this.
 
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I haven't cleaned my laptop in a very long time also. I was thinking of wiping the hard drive and reloading everything. That's a lot of work and I'm thinking that you folks that do that for a living have a better way of doing this.

How long is 'a very long time'? On MS systems I wipe the drive clean and do a fresh install every 6 months. Linux; install once and forget about it ;).
 
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Never trust McAfee and Norton.

I'd like to add CA's suite to that statement. They give it away to RoadRunner subscribers and, IMO, it's garbage.

Unfortunately I'm using it on my Win 7 laptop but looking for an alternative that doesn't get so many false positives (it hit Portal Prelude's installer as a virus among others) and doesn't choke when trying to remove actual infected files. At least I can use ComboFix to nuke those.

I agree 100% about McAfee and Norton.
 
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[General] Mayhem;2131595 said:
I'm going to nuke CA from my machine and put Avast! Free on it.

Can anyone suggest a freeware firewall that'll run under Windows 7?

Win7 has a built in firewall. However, you really should get a decent router with a proper firewall instead. Depending on your budget; if you have money a Juniper router is your best bet, bar-none. Cisco (a real Cisco, not Linksys) is 2nd. For basic needs, a Linksys should be fine.
 
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Win7 has a built in firewall. However, you really should get a decent router with a proper firewall instead. Depending on your budget; if you have money a Juniper router is your best bet, bar-none. Cisco (a real Cisco, not Linksys) is 2nd. For basic needs, a Linksys should be fine.


Honestly, I don't have any faith in Win 7's firewall. No specific reason other than MS not specifically a firewall vendor.

I have a Netgear wireless router with a firewall, but also prefer to run something on my machines as well.
 
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[General] Mayhem;2131917 said:
Honestly, I don't have any faith in Win 7's firewall. No specific reason other than MS not specifically a firewall vendor.

I have a Netgear wireless router with a firewall, but also prefer to run something on my machines as well.

It all depends on how secure you want/need to be. Is this a home or office router? Are you running any services like www, ftp, dns, etc.? Does your Netgear have a "Block All WAN Requests" option? If so, enable it. This will block most port scans. 'Hardware' firewalls are much better than running software directly on the computer.

My router for instance is not a normal off the shelf one, it has IPS, Intrusion Protection Security which breaks down every packet that passes through the network and kills off most malicious software. This is done seamlessly and does not affect bandwidth speed due to the type of hardware in the router itself. If I'm being hit by anything, the router is taking the beating, not my computer and that is how it should be. :)
 
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Microsoft Security Essentials is pretty good I must say and I hate Microsoft. I use my windowz machine strictly for flashing roms and downloading crap to build themes and downloading wallpapers from all over the web and it does well. Also I like that it gets up running fairly quick. I usually run Mawarebytes once every couple of weeks just incase it missed something but it has not missed anything. Kudos to the worlds biggest OS and virus distributor.
 
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