OK, I have a new computer, and it came with McAfee security installed, including the firewall. The service seems to be free (though I haven’t checked to make sure yet). But on my old computer I used the free versions of zone alarm and avg and I liked both of them. My question is whether or not I should keep mcafee instead this time. I remember people around here saying that mcafee and norton were not as good as zone alarm and avg, but is that still the case? I mean M and N are big companies, and well known. Are they just lazy? Have they caught up to some of these smaller companies? Or should I just uninstall mcafee and use my old system instead?
AVG is a fantastic antivirus, and you should absolutely use it over McAfee.
But I don’t recommend any software firewall at all.
Which is nice if you have a router. If you only have windows I’d rather use something other than XP’s firewall. You know, something that can monitor and stop outgoing phone-home attempts. Zonealarm is good but there are many more. Check out majorgeeks.com.
I moved to AVG from Norton and McAffee about a year or so ago, and then moved to Avast about 6 months ago. I’ve stopped looking for a virus checker - Avast is free and catches everything as far as I can tell. I shifted from AVG when AVG found a virus on a manual check that it previously missed, then AVG stumbled hard trying to get rid of it. Avast found it and wiped it out smoothly and quickly.
I have Avast on one of my systems and AVG on the other. I don’t use a software firewall, but when I did it was ZoneAlarm. Unfortunately, I think ZA has gotten pretty bloated and troublesome in the last year or two. While the SP2 firewall doesn’t stop outgoing traffic, it causes far less problems than any 3rd party firewalls I have tried. If you make sure to keep on top of any possible spyware issues, the Windows firewall is more than adequate.
It’s worth noting that Dell stopped shipping McAfee as their default av application a few months ago and switched to Norton. Every couple of years they have a reason to switch, and the most recent version of McAfee was their reason this time around. No end to problems. For that reason alone I would suggest you switch to something else.
I was using the ZoneAlarm + Anti-Virus combo during the last couple of months. That worked fine at first but recently it started locking up the system when it saw files it didn’t like, or whatever the reason was.
I couldn’t figure out how to fix it, so I had to replace ZA/AV with AVG Free Edition, and that program instantly found a few viruses in downloaded Java applets that ZA/AV had missed. It’s true that AVG couldn’t automatically fix the issue – apparently it cannot delete archives (.jar) that contain viruses although it can scan into archives – but I don’t mind that since I can simply delete the archives myself.
As a software firewall, I’m just using the Windows firewall now. That seems sufficient since I’m already behind a hardware router.
Make sure you test your firewall/router here: https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
Some commercial routers have an open port or two and you want stealth.
Ah, the good old Shields Up! test by wacky Gibson Research… yeah, my system is fully stealthed on all ports.
I installed Avast based on this thread and it found a trojan AVG missed. My computer also seems to boot up faster and load programs quicker but I don’t know if that’s from the removal of the trojan or if AVG was hogging more system resources. Either way, it’s enough to get me to switch.
The August ish of MaximumPC has a section on security. They give Norton FW a 7, McAfee a 6, and ZoneLabs ZoneAlarmPro 5.5 a big whopping 9 out of 10. It’s fifty bones, though.
They also dug PC-cillin for overall protection.
Norton and McAfee have gotten worse every year. Norton especially, which is pretty much useless for all but the most well known virii.
I use PC-cillin at home… At work when doing repairs I use that, NOD32 and TrojanHunter.
Which is nice if you have a router. If you only have windows I’d rather use something other than XP’s firewall. You know, something that can monitor and stop outgoing phone-home attempts. Zonealarm is good but there are many more. Check out majorgeeks.com.[/quote]
Yeah… or you know, you could just not spend that much time worrying about it. Ya pompous ass.
Which is nice if you have a router. If you only have windows I’d rather use something other than XP’s firewall. You know, something that can monitor and stop outgoing phone-home attempts. Zonealarm is good but there are many more. Check out majorgeeks.com.[/quote]
Yeah… or you know, you could just not spend that much time worrying about it. Ya pompous ass.[/quote]
No worry, Joe Six Pack (ya kind of loozer that’s making me my $$$).
Another vote for Avast…
OK, quick question. I have my router working, etc. I am a bit worried about network security though. I can’t seem to connect if I have the WEP enabled, but that’s probably because I am too ignorant to set it up properly. But shields up says I am stealthy. Is WEP just to keep intruders off of my WLAN? Does the option my router has to only allow select PCs access do the trick, or should I ALSO enable WEP?
Robert:
WEP is only good enough to keep unsophisticated folks out of your wireless LAN (and yes, it’s only there to secure your WLAN). There’s plenty of guides/tools on the 'net that explain how to crack into WEP networks.
If you really want your wireless network to be secure, you need to bump up to WPA, or even better, the new WPA2.
MAC address spoofing is too easy to do, so enabling MAC address validation on your router is also useless, as anyone who can break WEP will also be able to spoof your MAC address.
/Eph
In the latest issue of Consumer Reports, PC-cillin Internet Security ranked number one in their Anti-Virus suite tests, something that surprised me for some dumb reason. I guess I always thought of Trend Micro as kind of the poor man’s Symantec (ranked 4th) or McAfee (ranked 3rd).
Of course, those results are from their testers, which I believe were more concerned with things like ease of use, speed of scan and so-forth than actual detection capabilities.
On the anti-spyware side of things, Microsoft’s anti-spyware beta and Webroot’s Spysweeper took 1st and 2nd, respectively.
Ephraim’s right. Pretty much every option to “secure” a wireless network is weak by itself, in general because each item only protects from one type of hack on one part of the connection. For instance, encryption only prevents sniffing. MAC verification only prevents Joe Sixpack from connecting with his new wireless laptop. Not broadcasting the SSID only prevents people from easily finding the fact that you have one. And so forth.
I always recommend all of: making up a goofy SSID and setting it to not broadcast, MAC address verification, and the strongest encryption protocol supported by the devices. The actual goal is to simply make your wireless LAN much harder to get on than the next guy’s. :)