Cycling UK Forum

cycleruk wrote:I used free AVG for a couple of years but did have a serious problem when it let through a "virus".

I changed to Avast, also the free version, and that has been good upto now.

Exactly my experience.

Avast is good but I now use Microsoft security essentials which does it all.

Thanks to all, I'm now fairly comfortable either using AVG or the windows security package (It's the 2010 windows package, post vista, so fairly recent)

pedalsheep wrote:AVG Free has worked fine for me the last 2 or 3 years tho I'm certainly no expert on these things.

+1.

I was having 'issues' with my computer and a friendly IT person suggested that my Mc**** security package was pants and slowing the machine down. He later backed this up by loaning me the latest edition of a magazine, Computer Shopper, I think. In it there was a review of various free and for-purchase packages. Sure enough, the Mc***** came bottom of the list for paid packages. Cannot remember the name of the top, but Kasperski came a close second. For the free packages, AVG came tops. SO AVG it now is, as soon as it was installed, it detected a risk that was previously undetected, and the machine now works a lot faster.
Seemples Tch!

Alan D wrote:I was having 'issues' with my computer and a friendly IT person suggested that my Mc**** security package was pants and slowing the machine down. He later backed this up by loaning me the latest edition of a magazine, Computer Shopper, I think. In it there was a review of various free and for-purchase packages. Sure enough, the Mc***** came bottom of the list for paid packages. Cannot remember the name of the top, but Kasperski came a close second. For the free packages, AVG came tops. SO AVG it now is, as soon as it was installed, it detected a risk that was previously undetected, and the machine now works a lot faster.
Seemples Tch!

+1 for Kaspersky , but I get it free with my on line banking from Barclays - I believe Halifax customers can also get a free av package.

matt2matt2002 wrote:

Redvee wrote:AVG was rocommened to me 10+ years ago and have used it since with no problems.

Me to

I have it set to scan the hard drive once a week
Is this over-kill?
I slows down the computer for a couple of hours but isn't really a problem
Anyone think I'm doing anything wrong by scanning every week?
Not wearing out the hard drive??

Definately not overkill. I've set Avira to do so on my netbook - the full scan is a safety net for me, just incase something crops up that shouldn't be there. And that has happened at least once...
What wears harddrives down - therefore slowing them - is the constant moving of files. Defragmenting over-comes this though I defragment whenever i remember - usually about once a fortnight.

MS Security Essentials works for me too. Seems to have a nice light touch.

I don't usually bother with AV, but I built myself a reasonable PC recently - I3 / 4 GB, and I thought I might - but I found that AVG got in the way far too much.

So far it hasn't actually saved me from anything, but spotted when rogue websites dropped trojans - even if they were probably made inert by my not clicking on the associated bogus AV popups - which I was getting from perfectly innocent Google image searches for a bit. Google seem to have got on top of that now..

gentlegreen wrote:MS Security Essentials works for me too. Seems to have a nice light touch...

How do you know it's working - seriously?

You don't know what it isn't picking up. It's not my immediate area but I have worked alongside IT security and eCrime folk for the last 7 years. One once said that McAfee and Symantec were only picking up about 40% of the known malware etc.

It may have moved on but it used to be AVG and Kaspersky that were rated highly - the basic functionality (anti-virus / anti-malware) is / was the same for the free and paid for versions.

It's unfortunate but the best and worst performing defences may seem the same - neither will notify you of any malware on your machine.

hungrydave wrote:

gentlegreen wrote:MS Security Essentials works for me too. Seems to have a nice light touch...

How do you know it's working - seriously?

You don't know what it isn't picking up. It's not my immediate area but I have worked alongside IT security and eCrime folk for the last 7 years. One once said that McAfee and Symantec were only picking up about 40% of the known malware etc.

It may have moved on but it used to be AVG and Kaspersky that were rated highly - the basic functionality (anti-virus / anti-malware) is / was the same for the free and paid for versions.

It's unfortunate but the best and worst performing defences may seem the same - neither will notify you of any malware on your machine.

I suppose I could have zombie PC, but hopefully sooner or later I would be informed of that...

I was going to say, the best defence is not letting teenagers on your PC. I used to periodically muck out my sister's PC and if they had one thing, they had thousands.
Mostly I used to just try to bring up the control panel and there would usually be something stopping me do that.

I don't even have a social circle including me in bulk emailings of "humorous" emails.

I get the odd phishing email ..

Don't use an anti virus program. No problems.

I love Linux

Alex L wrote:Don't use an anti virus program. No problems.

I love Linux

The irony is that the sort of people who could get into Linux are the people least likely to click on stuff they shouldn't

gentlegreen wrote:

Alex L wrote:Don't use an anti virus program. No problems.

I love Linux

The irony is that the sort of people who could get into Linux are the people least likely to click on stuff they shouldn't

My Gran uses Linux, I'm sure anyone else could too

My basic problem - and I've worked in low-level IT support for decades - is quite how people get themselves in the pickles they do.

The only two times I ever got infected with anything was once when I built an XP machine and went online to service-pack it instead of downloading it elsewhere and doing it offline, and the other time was when I right-clicked on an obvious dodgy email attachment and executed it instead of scanning it (for my own curiosity) .. oh and I actually fell for those bogus Windoze updates you used to get by email after ignoring them for ages ( ) - but luckily by then I'd disabled the script engine ...

The moment when I got really cynical about AV was when I received something nasty attached to an email apparently from PayPal one Friday evening and tested it with several major AV systems and none of them were up to date enough to even recognise it as hostile...

Is it possible to use Microsoft Security Essentials and AVG on the same computer?
Would there be conflicts between the two programs?

De Sisti wrote:Is it possible to use Microsoft Security Essentials and AVG on the same computer?
Would there be conflicts between the two programs?

Never a good idea.

I once completely broke a work PC doing that - I think they were probably scanning each other or something.

You could install them and make sure only one's turned on at a time I suppose...

Personally I begrudge having any AV on my PC - let alone two. and I couldn't get AVG to stop bugging me about stuff - I think I wanted to have it just to test downloaded files - but it wouldn't stop thinking it knew better...