What's the Best Anti-virus?

I've recently switched to NIS 2012. I never had a problem with it, unlike most of my AV experiences. I recommend this product.

My experience with.
Avast - Many problems, conflicts, and misses a lot.
MSE - Doesn't detect a lot of viruses.
Trend Micro - Doesn't detect certain malwares, spyware.
AVG - Usually causes problems and misses a lot
Avira - Unstable, misses a lot.

^ It may look biased and obsolete, it's just my experience.

When running AVG I didn't run into a lot of problems and on a few occasions even when I had that problem disabled from starting up with Windows it actually came to life out of nowhere to flag a trojan some site was trying to get on!

But just like too many other older program was found to be lacking in detection "hidden" items when running a full system sweep! One program would catch this type of bug while you needed some other program along with it to catch another type! Back and forth, back and forth.... blah blah blah with trying out several program until finally with one now seeing a 100% success rate along with discuvery not seen with any other!

When you get into a program seeing that type of success rate stay with it rather then needing a dozen to do the same work! If you are not able to buy a full retail program being on a tight budget at least add on some other items like Web of Trust and even the Crawler Security Toolbar which has en effective alert system to flag bad sites. AVG has that as well as Clam but requires you to install that program to see the option included.

Nothing is ever totally 100%. But you'll know when you have one of the top programs when it finds what others miss!

True, nothing is 100% guaranteed and common sense is another layer of protection. I personally use MSE and MBAM-free with scans on demand. No probs whatsoever. You don't need to spend a hard earned dollar for an AV, but this is my opinion

Well when running strictly freebies past tense here I always had to have two or three other programs installed as well to find things the av installed at the time would miss! I simply got sick of the need for several when only one or two max would do the job even more effectively!

I never go by reviews on any however but by in use daily to see what will do the best. There's an old saying of "you get what you pay for" when making the right choice as far as system protections too.

Free is always better then nothing at all! There isn't doubt about that at all. And certainly common sense can be just as large a factor as to which program(s) you eventually go with.

Raise the Bar

I'll throw out a little challenge here.
If you're in Tech support work of any kind, you've heard variants of this axiom: "never underestimate the creativity of stupid people".
if there is a way for a user to trash his/her system, they will find it.

in that regard, I Have yet to find a tool that will effectively scan, lockdown, monitor, or otherwise prevent Infections-Via-Toolbars, ESPECIALLY for the worst browser out there: Internet Exploder. If any of you know of such, post something.

Also its really helpful in this discussion for the experienced among us [i point three fingers at ME] to be careful to distinguish PREVENTATIVE tools/commentary vs. REMEDIATION. Its one thing to say your choice of prevention works well 'cause you never see a problem, but its quite a different animal to work on a client's diseased rig after the gate has been propped open and all sorts of gremlins have taken up residence.
And, repeating myself, the top 2 paths, these days, via which malware gets in are:
1. Toolbars
2. Clicks... clicking on those deceptive links.

the 2., AVAST is very good at warning about, as is Chrome - flagging web pages BEFORE the user gets on them, re: the existence of hot links to malicious wares, but nothing is perfect in this regard, in part because there is a hazy line between patently MALICIOUS code and mere Intrusive Marketeering & Redirectors.

I got stung once while trying Avast out! AVG Free on the hand at least came to life one day while actually disabled in the msconfig when a trojan got stuffed on me back in the XP days!

With the exception of only a few toolbars I certainly agree that many addon bars leave me wide open for a variety of things! In reality there are the "pros and cons" regardless of what programs you run. The two systems one desktop the other a laptop were infected by the user not "paying attention" to the snare of fake spyware programs. I-Worms in disguise!

I really love Norton Internet Security 360. My computer came with it 3 years ago, and I just keep renewing it every year. Never had any viruses. Some say it may be a memory hog. I never had any experience with a less memory hogging anti virus...but this works fantastic!

Norton used to always have a bad rep for being "bloated"! That was always the main complaint.

In the last few years however more focus by software companies like Symantec and GFI has been at increasing web security in order to curve the volume of newer malwares as a way to improve on their own products.

Having had VIPRE av on now since May 2010 I can say that one runs so quietly in the background and does seem to live up to the company's claims of not chewing up resources! At no time has it ever interfered with any resource intensive program even when running more then virtual machine. In fact while in a vm without any protections installed VIPRE extended it's own web filtering there as well as seen with the 7 host OS!

Well I imagine the full Norton 360 program may be more bloated then just the Internet Security. Maybe?

Avast for me. just brilliant .

ProjectDan35 said:

Well I imagine the full Norton 360 program may be more bloated then just the Internet Security. Maybe?

Click to expand...

What I found to be actually the bloated Norton was the old Symatec System Works going back several years now.

I think Symantec now however is trending much more like I see with VIPRE's av renamed from Home Premium to Internet Security 2012 being the version of that program that includes a firewall and web filtering processes.

I recently spoke with someone else here running the 2010 Internet Security by Norton that noticed the newer versions are less cluttered then had been the story for Norton over the years.

As far as Avast when tried here that one couldn't find a data miner while AVG at time also did but missed others. Back then I would have to have a few more programs on in order to catch what the others kept missing. Not any more!

Lately one thing to note here is that I have been seeing security prompts about some sites without VIPRE kicking in but by WaterFox the 64bit flavor of FireFox showing browsers can also make a difference at times.

The prompt will show "this site is not secure. Do you wish to proceed?". And even Web of Trust hasn't flagged anything either. Or is it simply WF being overprotective to some extent?

Oh. I'm running 2012.

I'm running the 2012 for VIPRE as well having seen that go on as an update over the 2010 HP version I bought. In May however I will going for the lifetime license offer! Won't have to worry about expiration dates or replacing one for a new version since it will be automatic.

Night Hawk, I was interested in the Vipre lifetime license that you posted about. Have you checked into being able to transfer to a new machine in time? I was told that you can't transfer it.

From what I was told by another company may differ from what I hear back from GFI once I get a chance to make an inquiry on what is allowable. Companies realize people buy new machines or build new eventually.

But the one thing I was told by the tech support of one company may not hold for them. With one company when explaining I had to reinstall the program while running the 7 RC and moving onto the retail was that any time Windows was to be reinstalled the program would be uninstalled first "while connected to the internet" in order to preserve the activation for that purchase. That however was still on the same machine similar to what you would see with reactivation of Windows following a clean install in case of... ?

I posted an inquiry on the support site and will waiting to hear back on this from someone works for GFI. But I did notice most of these types of inquiries are advised to be directed at the GFI customer service dept. directly.

Solarstarshines said:

tw33k said:

These are the results of the latest AV Comparatives testing...

View attachment 196765

Note: Qihoo may have detected more malware than the others but it also had the most false positives

Click to expand...

webroot's not on that list :sarc:

Anyway Just purchased my wifey a laptop i got rid of Norton and Installed MSE instead

I could care less for a free 60 day trial i don't need the headache's of alerts if you know what i mean also getting rid of all bloatware

Click to expand...

OO dear NH see Comodo didn't get a mention unless they haven't tested it yet strange cos it's always been near the top five - although I did see some ZDNet articles re problems with CIS being hacked / broken.

BitDefender is the best this year, I think.

I use F-Secure, great support and features.

ICit2lol said:

OO dear NH see Comodo didn't get a mention unless they haven't tested it yet strange cos it's always been near the top five - although I did see some ZDNet articles re problems with CIS being hacked / broken.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately which is too often the case you won't expect to find programs listed in any reviews if it's not on the top selling lists of recommended programs. The free Comodo firewall as well as the Jetico Personal firewall both saw good reps in years past but would be excluded from a comparison between retail firewall programs.

Each review may see a different combination of programs being compared as well. It mainly comes down to just who is conducting the tests as well as the review's author as to which programs will be named as well as displayed in the results. Another factor would be some programs not seeing a latest new version at the time the tests and comparisons were being made or only a select number would be tested.

Yeah I concur NH just that Matousec have always had it in their line up - Results and comments - www.matousec.com and one that seems to have come up the ranks a bit Jetico?

My worry now is KIS is not in there as I have been an avid well rabid Kaspersky person for a long time now. However I have been trying Comodo on the testers and haven't had an issue with it as a matter of fact the config is quite similar to the KS one I use. But those reports out of ZDnet - can't find the newsletter right now (I did post it at the time I found it) do send some uneasy messages.

But as for the test results a lot of things them test do vary quite wildly from one site to another eh?

Each test site will likely place a few different test types as well as introducing different malwares which will play a role in the overall end results. For that you would creating a different test environment in each case while some will still come ahead depending on how they are written.

The product results only show Comodo Internet Security Premium at the top of the list of 12 with all others not recommended at all. You'll also notce that there are several other programs listed under products but only so many picked out and apparently a stressed bias at only one program alone! That tells me someone is motivated to promote only that one alone and this wasn't a totally objective testing and comparison.

The one and only thing they got right was what was put at the bottom of the list!