OT: Anti-virus / firewall solutions

[Xrati]

I use Lavasoft Personal Firewall, which is not free (~$30.). Nothing that is any good, is ever free. It comes with a free 30 day trial period and has already proven itself worth the money four or five times on phishing sites that I was redirected to. If there's something on the market that works well, I beleive you should support it rather then watch it "go away" for lack of support. Even Spybot S&D asks for donations which I have happily have contributed to. You guys need to remember that when you find a good program (just as you support SE) you need to support the product or it will disappear and there's just not enough good software producers left to just continue using freeware.

I will NEVER use any Norton or Symantec software products again. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Grenade.gif[/img]

You can get by with a good firewall and some spyware. You won't need much more than that to protect your computer. Like Fyron has mentioned, the XP firewall is useless other then a false sense of security it gives you (makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside).

ALSO keeping your privacy/security settings for Firefox or Explorer to the high side will help. You can bring them down later for sites you know and trust.

Spyware S&D has a program called the 'Tea Timer" that protects entries to your registry without your premission. It is one of the best ways to protect your computer. You can't even install a new program without authorizing it to allow registry changes.

[Fyron]

Xrati said:
Nothing that is any good, is ever free.

Most commercial software is shovelware crap, unfortunately...

Xrati said:
Spyware S&D has a program called the 'Tea Timer" that protects entries to your registry without your premission. It is one of the best ways to protect your computer. You can't even install a new program without authorizing it to allow registry changes.

In my experience, Tea Timer has been more hassle than it's worth. It catches harmless things left and right and doesn't stop a lot of more harmful system accesses. Luckily Vista's UAC makes it completely obsolete, and does a better job to boot.

[Renegade 13]

Awesome, thanks for the suggestions guys! I owe you one

[capnq]

Xrati said: You guys need to remember that when you find a good program (just as you support SE) you need to support the product or it will disappear and there's just not enough good software producers left to just continue using freeware.

I have eventually become dissatisfied with every anti-virus and anti-spyware app I've ever used, commercial or free. The only reason that I suggested AVG is that I haven't been using it long enough for it to disappoint me.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

So use two. Double coverage.

[Xrati]

Xrati said:
Spyware S&D has a program called the 'Tea Timer" that protects entries to your registry without your premission. It is one of the best ways to protect your computer. You can't even install a new program without authorizing it to allow registry changes.

In my experience, Tea Timer has been more hassle than it's worth. It catches harmless things left and right and doesn't stop a lot of more harmful system accesses. Luckily Vista's UAC makes it completely obsolete, and does a better job to boot.

[/quote]

So if it's not Vista, it's "No Good?" I don't think so.

In my experience Fyron, I've had no problems with it. Maybe I just have it setup better for my system. Sometimes all we have to work with is what we are given...

[Fyron]

Xrati said:
So if it's not Vista, it's "No Good?" I don't think so.

Why do you extrapolate such a grandiose claim from 2 data points? XP's firewall does not do the most important task of a software firewall, blocking unknown outbound connections (it was useless from the day SP2 came out, nothing to do with Vista). Tea Timer is overly aggressive in blocking the type of changes it blocks, and misses other important types. These are simple facts. Vista happens to come with better software for these particular applications, but there are certainly lots of better apps that can be used in XP as well (eg: Comodo)..

[capnq]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
So use two. Double coverage.

Two antivirus shields running simultaneously can actually interfere with each other and let a virus slip through in the confusion.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I did not know that.

Can I get evidence for that?

[Fyron]

It's common wisdom, espoused in every security-related article on the web (including the one I linked to in this thread). Many even recommend not even having more than 1 AV installed at a time. They tend to enable the resident shields automatically, without user intervention. Even Microsoft now advises you to not install a second AV app. Vista even pops up a warning message when you try to do it; hopefully XP SP3 will do so as well. I don't know about explicit evidence, but Google is filled with admonitions against it.