Anti-Virus software that sucks, and doesn't

kakata

Banned User - hyper flamming
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I want to suggest everyone....
forget about Norton you pay for it.
Go to AVG its free and 300x better.:D
 
hi from Miami here also Tell me more about AVG

I have a new computer but refuse to "activate" McCaffee They are always interrupting whenever I am doing somethging(playing on line mostly :))
Thanks
 
I want to suggest everyone....
forget about Norton you pay for it.
Go to AVG its free and 300x better.:D

Im starting to agree with you ,thought id try norton when i got my new pc and for some reason it playes havoc with my printer as well as freezing every now and then ,used AVG on my old pc and it worked well,I might go back to it
 
You get what you pay for.

Free=crap

If you have the money to blow at a gambling site, then you have the money to secure your PC properly.

My daughter paid for Norton an it sucked
we now run AVG on ALL our pc's an no problems

so I get great service an not a penny spent you are so right Kakata:D

Cindy
 
My daughter paid for Norton an it sucked
we now run AVG on ALL our pc's an no problems

so I get great service an not a penny spent you are so right Kakata:D

Cindy

Okay, I guess I should clarify things a bit here.

First of all, Norton and McAfee are absolute crap.

They are pre-installed on new PC's because their developers have paid the computer companies to do so, knowing that it's the only way they can gain customers because no savvy computer user would ever trust them to secure their PC.

To clarify my 'FREE=CRAP' statement, especially regarding AVG Free.

The anti virus software they provide is first class, I agree.

HOWEVER, the only thing you get free is a virus scanner and cleaner.

It provides no protection against malware, port scan viruses, or any of the truly dangerous things that are out there, and some of them will find you even when you aren't even using the computer.

Plus, it only catches them if they are a well known virus that is attempting to install itself, or for the sneakier ones when you do your daily scan.
If the virus got on your system moments after a scan, it has the whole day to wreak havoc until it gets caught by the scan the next day.

I personally run AVG Pro, the full internet security suite, and nothing gets through, not even spam.

Also recommended is Kaspersky Internet Security. You can get a free 30 day trial from the website.

The two cost about the same, but if money is really tight, go with Kaspersky.
The license is CDN$80/year, but good for 3 computers. So you just split it with two friends.
 
Just my 2 on the subject:

.... forget about Norton ....

I used, and paid for, Norton for years. Back in the day it was the best there was. That day has passed. Now it is flaky bloat-ware that'll do you and your system almost as much harm as good. Look elsewhere for your AV software.

You get what you pay for. Free=crap

Sorry but that's just not true when it comes to software. I was in the biz for 15 years and one of the standard marketing ploys was "charge more 'cause the customers will think they're getting more". Just ain't so! Software has to be judged by what it does, how well it does it, and how it behaves on your computer. Judging by how much it costs doesn't cut it.

As to "free = crap", well, ever heard of "open source" software like Firefox? Some of the best software out there is "open source", and free.

Besides, these days you can pay $50 or more and get crap too so which would you prefer, free crap or expensive crap?

If you're going to say "what about support?" I'd say try getting support (these days) from folks like Symantec (Norton) or scads of other so-called "get what you pay for" software companies. Talk about crap!
 
You get what you pay for.

Free=crap

If you have the money to blow at a gambling site, then you have the money to secure your PC properly.

I have to disagree, I have been using AVG and recently Avast and never had any virus issues, and I am very literate when it comes to computers, and live in Langley too, thats gotta speak for something. ;)
 
You get what you pay for.

Free=crap.
You could hardly be more wrong.

Take MS Frontpage and any number of free HTML editors, OpenOffice, nvu, Mozilla. Similarly IIS and Apache.

I could tell you some shocking examples from work. Some smooth talking salesmen sold us a proprietary e-mail system for several million pounds. It just did not work, it collapsed under the load. It was scrapped after 6 months, and replaced by a free, open source system that works reliably.

If you want to pay for software, by all means do, but don't imagine that you get better quality.
 
I want to suggest everyone....
forget about Norton you pay for it.

Some years back I worked in PC Support and Norton AV was our nemesis LOL. Error messages everywhere. More often than not we used to uninstall it and get an alternative, and often even the NAV uninstall would leave the user with unwanted error messages every time they booted. I'm sure things have moved on, but I still shudder at the thought of dealing with NAV. ;)
 
I have been using AVG free for years; but just got an infection even with it installed and running.
I pulled the drive out and scanned it, the AVG scan says it is clean but when I reboot I get the virus alerts. I also tried AVAST - that cleaned up some stuff that AVG didn't, but still had the AVG alerts immediately on reboot.

Then I scanned it with Sophos - it found 100+ infected files, I had to delete them, but it does actually seem to have fixed it - no more alerts with either AVG or Sophos.

At the moment, I am thinking that 'free=crap' is a definite possibilty for antivirus software!
 
I really hate Norton, it screwed my last computer up, sure they did pay for it, but still....
I now use f-secure, get it free from my job, and i have had no problems at all. And I also used to use AVG and it was great =)
 
I used the e-Trust suite for a couple of years because it came free with my Frontiernet high speed. It's very good, but at some point it decided not to allow Smartdownload, no matter how I tweaked the "allowed" bits...so for most of a year I couldn't play any RTG's.

I tried Avast, and except that it seemed to slow things down I was happy with it.

Now, I'm happy with a cocktail'o'freebies...AVG, Spybot Search and Destroy (minus that stupid Tea Timer thingy), Spyware Blaster, and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware...with a weekly run of Wise Registry Cleaner and Wise Disk Cleaner. A couple of times a week I'll run the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner ( Link Removed ( Old/Invalid) ) when I'm asleep.

Luckily, the IT guy from my day job is a friend, and once a month or so he stops by, plugs in the Big Box, and checks the 3 house computers. The other two have paid-for anti-everything, and usually they have minor things that have slipped through...but my personal 'puter with the freebie cocktail almost always passes with flying colors.

It's my experience with a little experimentation, one can have a clean computer with no out of pocket expense.
 
I must agree with the Norton haters. Its the worst!

I build pc's and have never paid for antivirus software. I scan regularly (and immunize) with Adaware and manually clean my registry with HiJackThis.
 
I agree with everyone else - Norton sucks!
I've had it on my desktop PC for years - I was going to cancel it last year, but I forgot and they automatically renewed it and charged me 70-ish quid for the privilege. :mad:
Being a lazy SOB I let it ride for another year - but when it runs out at Christmas time, that's it - it's history.
Norton does have some very good features - but there are far too many things going on in the background which bring my already very slow old PC to a halt - it's just tooooo frustrating!!

I use Avira on my laptops (one free, one premium), which is much less resource hungry and I have not had any virus problems (touch wood!) in 4 years.
The only complaint I have is the false-positive it throws up every time it scans, or I try to run 3Dice. :mad:

KK
 
I'd have to join the Norton hater's club.

I'm currently using F-secure, part of my cable package, and I am very happy with it.

There was a period of almost a year that F-secure for Vista was not available to me as part of my package, and I used AVG freeware. While it did not block incoming spyware, I ran the free spyware cleaner regularly and zapped them off my computer.

Paid memberships get the blocking feature. And it's significantly cheaper than Norton or McAfee.
 
I haven't used Norton in over 10 years. I quit using it when I used to run Windows 95 because I found it was a terrible resource hog.

I've been using McAfee since then and I used to swear by it but that's changed recently too.

With Mcafee running I mangaged to somehow get a trojan from some website and it infected everything including Mcafee. McAfee would run but all services were stopped and turning them on would give me the blue screen of death.

I contacted McAfee since I was paying for the software and they blamed my hard drive. After a lengthy conversation to convince them that my hard drive is scanned on a regular basis and everything was fine before I got this trojan they told me not to worry because they have a "crack team" of virus specialists that could remove any virus from my system... for 60 dollars.

That's when I got pissed. I said - Your company sold me this software designed to protect my computer from viruses and trojans and in the end the software couldn't even protect itself. You would think that no matter what the hell was happening to my computer the software protecting me would at the very least be capable of self preservation. So now you're asking me to pay you 60 dollars to remove a virus from the very software that you sold me that's supposed to be protecting me from viruses?

I gave up. I formatted the hard drive. I bought a second hard drive. I reinstalled everything on the second hard drive including McAfee since I'm still subscribed to it for almost a year and the virus problem has only happened once. I still don't trust it but it's better than nothing.

Then I bought Acronis True Image. Now once a week my computer automatically creates an image of my new hard drive on the original hard drive. I don't trust any AV software anymore. Somehow the crap manages to get in eventually anyway and this time I won't even bother trying to clean it. I'll just put the image of my uninfected drive back and carry on like it never happened.
 
I haven't used Norton in over 10 years. I quit using it when I used to run Windows 95 because I found it was a terrible resource hog.

I've been using McAfee since then and I used to swear by it but that's changed recently too.

With Mcafee running I mangaged to somehow get a trojan from some website and it infected everything including Mcafee. McAfee would run but all services were stopped and turning them on would give me the blue screen of death.

I contacted McAfee since I was paying for the software and they blamed my hard drive. After a lengthy conversation to convince them that my hard drive is scanned on a regular basis and everything was fine before I got this trojan they told me not to worry because they have a "crack team" of virus specialists that could remove any virus from my system... for 60 dollars.

That's when I got pissed. I said - Your company sold me this software designed to protect my computer from viruses and trojans and in the end the software couldn't even protect itself. You would think that no matter what the hell was happening to my computer the software protecting me would at the very least be capable of self preservation. So now you're asking me to pay you 60 dollars to remove a virus from the very software that you sold me that's supposed to be protecting me from viruses?

I gave up. I formatted the hard drive. I bought a second hard drive. I reinstalled everything on the second hard drive including McAfee since I'm still subscribed to it for almost a year and the virus problem has only happened once. I still don't trust it but it's better than nothing.

Then I bought Acronis True Image. Now once a week my computer automatically creates an image of my new hard drive on the original hard drive. I don't trust any AV software anymore. Somehow the crap manages to get in eventually anyway and this time I won't even bother trying to clean it. I'll just put the image of my uninfected drive back and carry on like it never happened
+2..:thumbsup:
 
If you want safe... stay in bed.

Question:
What is the biggest difference between the guys that write anti-virus software and the guys that write the viruses????

Answer:
Their bank account balances...




For myself, I use layers of protection... but there is very little or no protection from things like 'Zeus'. Zeus has been recently shown to move through all the big anti-virus software, free and paid both, like they weren't even there.

I would also say that if you use windows, M$'s Windows Defender (free) is a very good add on layer of protection that works well, even though it's M$ crap.
 
That's why I keep an updated image. I don't really care what you do anymore. I'll just put it back tomorrow.
 
I also use " iobit security 360 "(free) along with avg....never had problem.:D
Thats my experience and I passed it on....thats all.:rolleyes:
 
AVG is very good.
The only downfall is the pop ups you get each day.


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