I had a friend try and convince me that I needed Norton 360 or something similar. I had always heard that Norton programs had gotten terrible bloated and to stay away. I have my firewall, I update my anti-virus weekly, update my anti-spam weekly, etc. I think I’m fairly security minded. Should I have an “Internet suite”? I don’t use Firefox as I just never cared for it, but maybe I should. I don’t know. What do y’all think?
Most security suites are designed to line the pockets of those making them and that’s about it.
Whether your cobble together your protection from a few good programs, or find a decent all-in-one solution (NOD32, Avira), you’re no better or worse off.
The worst thing you could do is buy a Norton or McAfee product. Trend Micro isn’t much better these days. I avoid all three for the most part.
Delrina Cyberjack.
AVG 8 is nice and free.
Machfive speaks truth – both Norton and McAfee are terrible.
One of the original advantages of Firefox over IE is that IE used to run ActiveX without nary a warning. ActiveX is a nice way to acquire malware, if nothing else. IE7 now defaults to telling you if you are running an ActiveX control and permits you not to run it. Firefox is also a lot cleaner about running HTML, XML, and their related processes. Nearly everyone I know runs Firefox at least partly because of all the extensions available. Now at this point, perhaps all the available (good) extensions for Firefox are available for IE7 too. Lastly, MS is not known for its commitment (in more than words) to security and that makes a lot of people nervous about its browser. Again, this may have changed lately, but most people don’t want to find out the hard way.
Any recommendations for idiot-proof suites for one’s non-techy friends & relatives? I’m looking for a fire-and-forget option here: something with minimal user interaction which is still better than surfing the net naked, preferably with low resource requirements. I used ZoneAlarm 6 before: it was OK, but WAY too many pop-ups about allowing network or program access; and didn’t update itself without user input.
Webroot Spysweeper Antivirus and Antispyware is my general recommendation for clients who want antivirus, antispyware and firewall protection.
I recommend it mostly for the Spysweeper antispyware combined in an all-in-one package that’s pretty straightforwards for non-technically-inclined users, all without the heavy memory footprint the big guys have.
Also, most editions are good for multiple PCs in the house, which is good for the average 2 PC house I see these days.
There is software out there with better protection, but I have found they can really confuse some end-users to the point where they make the wrong choices when configuring the protection.
Jesus Meister, I hate to slag on you, but “Webroot” is such a bullshit Best Buy answer that I can’t let that one go.
Webroot’s system resource usage is only topped by one single other piece of shit software, and that’s Norton. Leaving Norton out of it, Spy Sweeper is an abomination of CPU cycle abuse.
Unbongwah, if you MUST use a suite, NOD32 is as powerful as it comes and isn’t horribly complicated. It’s easier to use than Norton or Webroot, and non-techies have no problem deploying that stuff have the time, and it actually does something useful without sapping your processing power.
As I’ve said here and elsewhere, Spysweeper isn’t going to give someone the best protection possible, and also isn’t the least resource consuming protection suite available.
HOWEVER, I still recommend it for clients that fit ubongwah’s question about what to recommend to “non-techy friends & relatives”.
Why? Because while I personally would much rather see NOD32 or any of the more effective protection programs available on a system, I also come across plenty of systems that were compromised because the non-technical user disabled a security feature when one of those more complicated and confusing programs popped up with a false positive or other often poorly worded dialog box. And that includes NOD32 installations.
So while I absolutely agree NOD32 is the better technical solution, I disagree that it’s the better realistic solution for the average non-technical person whose system you’re not going to see for months at a time.
I run NOD32 at the house on multiple systems. However if I find someone who just can’t afford any solution, I tend to recommend AVG Free for AntiVirus and if needed, Spybot S&D for malware (mostly for it’s TeaTimer resident protection.)
I find that even the worst internet abuser will stop and take notice when TeaTimer pops up with the little messages as they browse. AVG Free will also mark “safe” sites in searches and while that’s no guarantee, again a little extra visual will steer the abusers in the right direction.
On the other hand, if you’re a techie or someone who wants lightweight, great protection that doesn’t bug the snot out of you, NOD32 is the shit.
Thanks for the recommendation. How good is ESET’s Smart Security suite? Antivirus is just one piece of the security puzzle…
Arise etc.
Any thoughts on Kaspersky Internet Security vs. VIPRE Internet Security? Or any other suggestions? Feeling paranoid lately and looking to pay for a month or so instead of freeware.
Kaspersky is pretty decent.
Personally I run Comodo and at my parents house I have installed Avast.
Kaspersky is known to collaborate with Russian intelligence, so there’s that…
Comodo (at least the firewall portion) consistently ranks at or above most commercial offerings, so don’t worry too much about not paying. I know its virus scanner wasn’t as high some time back, but I don’t know how it fares today. You can always use Comodo just for the firewall and use whatever virus scanner you want (Panda free was actually decent).
It has its quirks, but the only option I’ve actually found better is Windows Firewall Control (at the expense of being more daunting to set up initially).
Really? Cite please?
There are media reports about it but I also know of it from other sources, from years before these allegations hit the news.
http://www.scmagazineuk.com/kaspersky-lab-repudiates-new-russian-spy-claims/article/404684/
Just had a scare, was in performance monitor while I was wondering why Steam was taking so long downloading the warhammer patch (Comodo does some stupid shit unfortunately, even when both Steam.exe and the game folder is excluded…)…and I noticed a process called ‘avastSvc.exe’ appearing… but before I could open task manager to see its “image”/ location it was gone…
Since I am not using Avast, that was a bad sign I thought… luckily the main page on Performance Monitor has a lot of the information listed even after a process has been closed and it turned out that AvastSvc.exe was located in my KeePass folder… Even scarier I thought, since Keepass is used for all my password files… (I really should move the file to a external USB or something).
… But in the keepass folder there was no Keepass.exe, just AvastSvc.exe and I remembered that I had renamed the Executable.
Phew.
Still; Reminds me that Comodo, despite being very good, especially for power users, has some really annoying ‘features’.
Glasswire + Microsoft Windows Defender + HitmanPro Alert for me.