Can anyone recommend a virus/firewall program that isn't made by McAfee?

[Illuminati Primus]

Because I'm getting sick of being tea bagged by their awful awful subscription system and don't want to give them any more of my money. I'm happy to pay for a service if it's good, but not if it isn't.

What say you tech heads of the Raffe?

[mothedrine]

I like Avira, but it's not optimal out of the box. You need to tweak it and depending on how you do that, it can be a little chatty. As of last year, I think the best one right off of the shelf was Kaspersky.

edit: but Avira has a free version you can test drive I think.

[Random Precision]

I've been using the paid version of AVG for 5 or 6 years now without any issues at all. My office switched from McAfee to Norton a year or two ago. I got hit by nasty viruses on my work PC under both platforms.

ETA: AVG is also available as a free version, but it's pretty basic. The paid version has all of the bells and whistles you'd want.

[Jaglavak]

We dumped McAfee too. AVG subscription worked OK, but when we wanted to step down from two computers to just one, there was no way to do it. We could have just canceled the account and opened a new one, but that motivated me to swap over to a system I like better.

ZoneAlarm Free from zonealarm.com. The new free version nags you to upgrade about once a month but it fucks off with a click. Older versions didn't do that. Either way, lock that fucker down to full unabomber status including all ports, windows processes, and programs. Then unlock them one at a time as you bump into the need. Only a few windows processes need to touch the web. After a few days you rarely have to mess with it again.

Spybot Search & Destroy from Safer Networking. Be sure to install their Tea Timer system settings protector and do the browser immunization. It also has a right click menu item to scan files and folders. Email attachments get downloaded only from trusted sources and scanned before opening. Update Spybot weekly and schedule a scan for the middle of the night.

Finally, turn off all windows processes and services that you don't need, starting with uPnP and remote desktop. There are lists available on the web that show minimal, middle of the road, and full boat sets of services. I go minimal with a few exceptions. Also delete everything possible from your Startup program folder and do a Sysedit to have a goggle at your startup config files. Last but not least, do a Regedit and search for 'Runonce'. The entry just above will the called 'Run', and it's another place for startup programs to hide. Kill everything in there that you don't need. In Win7 you do this search again as there are two of them. You might want to set a restore point if you're not familiar with Regedit.

Firefox web browser with NoScript and Adblock. Also remember to do the Spybot immunize thing.

And that's it. The firewall blocks a lot of traffic. I avoid applications that require me to open ports or act as a server. I don't hang out on hacker sites and try to avoid downloading skeevy shareware. I don't download any software off torrents, although I will snag movies and documents. There are those who snort and tell me I'm just begging for trouble, but I haven't had a virus or successful attack in more than a decade.

[Manduck]

You already have the Windows firewall, so you could use that. For antivirus, Microsoft Security Essentials is free and highly rated.

[Harry]

Originally Posted by Manduck

You already have the Windows firewall, so you could use that. For antivirus, Microsoft Security Essentials is free and highly rated.

I know two superGeeks, both recommend the microsoft programs and use them on their machines that aren't running Linux.

[Jaledin]

Originally Posted by Manduck

You already have the Windows firewall, so you could use that. For antivirus, Microsoft Security Essentials is free and highly rated.

Yeah, that's where I'm at now. Obviously block Flash and JavaScript from browser/client.

Have a sour taste back when I was using a ca. 2001 box for audio recording and for web at apartment from AVG -- one day used to be able to disable AVG manually very easily when I needed the tiny amount of resources to not get the SKIP SKIP SCREECH but then they went more, and my box wasn't hot enough to handle it. Not AVG's fault at all, just kind of irked me that they switched to using a service rather than a process that could be killed.

Attitude now with this little netbook is, eh, it's fine with MS Security Essentials + Win Firewall + SpyBot TeaTimer, and the occasional scan with MalwareBytes Anti-Malware and the troublesome experiment undo with Revo Uninstaller. Don't even have a registry cleaner on this one anymore.

Sure do miss those hours spent manually searching for Norton keys in the registry and deleting them! Not.

[RealityChuck]

Windows firewall is good enough for most purposes -- it stops things from getting in (though if you download a virus, it won't stop it from going out). Security Essentials is also good.

Antivirus is a commodity (i.e., all antivirus software have the same effectiveness). And with a commodity, you buy the cheapest version. For antivirus, that means free, and there are other free antiviruses that are just as good as the paid version.

If you need a better firewall, then Zonealarm is a good choice. Again, get the free version.

[Jaglavak]

The problem I have with Windows firewall is the adaptive firewall thing*. It will negotiate access levels directly with software without any user input. For instance, if I screw up and install some sketchy software that tries to open a bunch of ports and phone home, Windows firewall would allow it while ZoneAlarm asks if I want to allow it. Windows firewall is easier and usually works OK, but it's not as bombproof.

*To be fair, a lot of firewalls do this these days, even ZoneAlarm. But with ZoneAlarm you can turn that shit off.

[Panacea]

I'm using the free versions of ZoneAlarm and SuperAntiSpyware. Spybot Search and Destroy is good too.

For scanning I also use Malwarebytes, also freeware.

[Jaglavak]

Obligatory advertisement; now I run Linux and don't have to worry about any of that stuff. But I still run a firewall just because.

[tunaman]

Yeah, I'm part of the "anything but McAfee" crowd.

AVG used to be pretty good, but the last version I'm familiar with (not the current version) was getting a little bloated, especially with that stupid "link scanner" thing (it would scan a Google results page and compare it to its list of "safe" sites; not only do IE and FF do that for you already, this slowed down web searches considerably). New versions might be better, though.

Avast! is free, but it used to pop-up a lot of ads ("don't you want to upgrade to our full version??"). You could tweak this to prevent the ads, but it was more trouble than it was worth, since every program update forced you to re-tweak it. If I'm not mistaken, Avira was pretty lousy with ads, too.

I'm a big fan of MSE, but the thing is... it's really only good for people who know what they're doing. If you're the type of person who clicks "Yes" or "Install" for every little thing, then maybe MSE isn't for you.

For paid options, I used to be a HUGE fan of Kaspersky, but it's really gotten bloated over the years. And, believe it or not, the newer versions of Norton is actually pretty good. It's been re-written to be much more efficient (more like the old Symantec AV than the giant, festering bloat that was Norton AV), and apparently you can turn off (or just not install) the BS that usually comes with it.

Frankly, I think software firewalls are pretty useless. I use the built-in Windows Firewall and don't give it much of a thought. Egress filtering is especially useless, so I've never seen the need for ZoneAlarm. However, I actually like ZoneAlarm, because it's hosed so many computers that it's given me at least $10,000 in billable hours over the years. For some reason, ZoneAlarm users seem to be "just enough knowledge to be dangerous" types.

Finally, turn off all windows processes and services that you don't need, starting with uPnP and remote desktop. There are lists available on the web that show minimal, middle of the road, and full boat sets of services. I go minimal with a few exceptions. Also delete everything possible from your Startup program folder and do a Sysedit to have a goggle at your startup config files. Last but not least, do a Regedit and search for 'Runonce'. The entry just above will the called 'Run', and it's another place for startup programs to hide. Kill everything in there that you don't need. In Win7 you do this search again as there are two of them. You might want to set a restore point if you're not familiar with Regedit.

This is, generally speaking, horrible advice. Charles Sparks has been peddling his snake oil (ha!) online for ages, and it's been proven over and over that his "tweaks" don't really offer much in terms of security or performance. Honestly, if your computer can't handle the "Computer Browser" service, it's really time to get a new box, and if you're the kind of person for which "Computer Browser" represents a security risk, you simply shouldn't own a computer. Sparks is almost as bad as that damn Steve Gibson.

[Jaglavak]

Please describe how an outside intrusion attempt can bypass a fully locked down ZoneAlarm firewall. Be specific.

Please describe how blocking windows processes from operating all kinds of security holes behind the scenes does not enhance my security. Let's start with uPnP.

Until then I will continue to disregard your advice on this matter.

[Jaledin]

Originally Posted by tunaman

This is, generally speaking, horrible advice. Charles Sparks has been peddling his snake oil (ha!) online for ages, and it's been proven over and over that his "tweaks" don't really offer much in terms of security or performance. Honestly, if your computer can't handle the "Computer Browser" service, it's really time to get a new box, and if you're the kind of person for which "Computer Browser" represents a security risk, you simply shouldn't own a computer.

That's the impression I've gotten just from casually happening on the latest and greatest news re tweaks.

But you have to admit, for an obsessive kind of person who needed a "clean" Windows box in the early 2000s, it was pretty fun to see just how "trim" you could (a) make things look using just standard services.msc and (b) stick it in and break it off where Microsoft was concerned.

[Jaglavak]

Suit yourself. I will continue to turn off crap running behind the scenes that I don't want or need.

[Rebo]

I'm no tech-head, but I have Kaspersky. I haven't noticed it to be "bloatware," and is quite effective.

[Old Overholt]

Originally Posted by Dolores Reborn

I'm no tech-head, but I have Kaspersky. I haven't noticed it to be "bloatware," and is quite effective.

Concur. Kaspersky has caught things that slipped through the "freebies" (AVG, I'm looking at you). To some, anti-virus may be just a commodity, but from my experience, you get what you pay for.

Old Overholt

[Jaledin]

Well that's kind of hostile, man. I don't disagree with you, either. Just trying to put the impulse to scour the reg and disable processes in perspective with what was the way -- I hope I'm wrong that the (IMO) good impulse to keep track of what's going on in hidden reaches of Windows is no longer necessary. I just heard it wasn't so much.

[Jaglavak]

No worries, wasn't swiping at you. I'm still a little annoyed over post #12. I'll get over it.