What's the Best Anti-virus?

lehnerus2000 said:

It is more likely that they would download spyware onto your PC, rather than lock it.
If they were interested in what you were doing, they wouldn't want to tip you off.

Here in Australia, ASIO, ASIS, and the Australian Federal Police have recently been lobbying the Government for the right to do whatever they like, without having to go to the trouble of getting warrants.

Apparently, having to prove that they have evidence that justifies a warrant is too much of an onerous burden.

The trojans that the rogue scam wares drop in with them are just enough to be seen by your av program due to how they are coded but don't actually do much of anything. The idea is they sound alarm bells with the existing system protection as part of the feat process iin order to get you motivated to pay out for the bogus software.

Once the bug's executable is no longer starting up with Windows all you have left is crud just about any lav or malware program will dispose of. That's the commonly type where you still have access to everything except your system protections being blocked along with the task manager. This other FBI PayPal scam however was geared to lock everything up including the Start menu on startup and why you have to boot into safe mode even on the hand helds where it was most commonly seen.

As far as eliminating the need for court authorized search warrants that would tend to lead to end up in what you would call a police state where the right to privacy in your own home has been lost. Anyone could then claim they have edvidence even when not having any and why the oversight of official sources like that would be lost. That would lead to bigger problems there.

Night Hawk said:

lehnerus2000 said:

It is more likely that they would download spyware onto your PC, rather than lock it.
If they were interested in what you were doing, they wouldn't want to tip you off.

The trojans that the rogue scam wares drop in with them are just enough to be seen by your av program due to how they are coded but don't actually do much of anything. The idea is they sound alarm bells with the existing system protection as part of the feat process iin order to get you motivated to pay out for the bogus software.

I meant Government Agencies, not malware writers.

The malware writers definitely want to attract the user's attention.

Night Hawk said:

As far as eliminating the need for court authorized search warrants that would tend to lead to end up in what you would call a police state where the right to privacy in your own home has been lost. Anyone could then claim they have edvidence even when not having any and why the oversight of official sources like that would be lost. That would lead to bigger problems there.

Agreed.

The Government has successfully terrified most people here and it seems like they'll agree to anything that is supposed to save them from paedophiles & terrorists.

The Government (Right Wing) has just introduced new laws that will jail journalists if they reveal dodgy behaviour performed by the Government or its agencies.
They claim it will only be used to protect National Security, however the definition is purely left to the discretion of the Attorney General.

The current Attorney General seems to contradict himself any time he is asked to explain what he said the last time he opened his mouth

Unlike the US, we don't have any laws to protect us from the Government.



I suggest that Avast users download the installer for the latest version, instead of updating the currently installed version.
I spent about an hour battling with Avast 2015 because its new features were running wild (continuously using 16% CPU).

The only way to fix the issue (on my PC) was to:

• Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features
• Find Avast in the list
• Choose "Change" from the Context menu (or click on it on the Command bar)
• Deselect a bunch of features/tools (I'm not sure what the problem feature was)

Presumably, if you use a new installer you may have the opportunity to deselect various items during the initial install.

I think you may want to consider dumping Avast and all of it's apparent headaches and take a good look at VIPRE! A contact who lives in the Outback by the way was the one who referred me to this one originally and I found it sound advice. He had previously done work for MS on occasions and consults with various software, hardware, other engineers from various companies.

It goes right on fast and other then the one problem a few years back due to the auto updater you never run into these types of problems. Typically removing the old in favor of installing a newer version of some software has always been the most common advice heard. That frees up all system resources leaving them available for the next newer version avoiding any hangups. The same goes for Windows and any other OS where you nuke the drive and start over fresh when going to change versions.

Ive been using AVG anti virus; and so far so good with it. I havent encountered any real issues using and running it and it was recommended by i believe it may be cnet editors as being one of the better ones they have tested and used.

lehnerus2000 said:

It is more likely that they would download spyware onto your PC, rather than lock it.
If they were interested in what you were doing, they wouldn't want to tip you off.

Here in Australia, ASIO, ASIS, and the Australian Federal Police have recently been lobbying the Government for the right to do whatever they like, without having to go to the trouble of getting warrants.

Apparently, having to prove that they have evidence that justifies a warrant is too much of an onerous burden.

Look as most of the regulars will know I have said for a long time now it doesn't matter what you and I do re security someone somewhere will crack it and what lehnerus says is going to happen whether we like it or not, because they have the resources to do just that. The alternative is to let the ratbags that threaten us with all sorts of dire consequences to do and say what they like with impunity and to disallow any law enforcement agency to not monitor suspect individuals is tantamount to utter stupidity.
I have no time for those bleeding hearts who carry on about civil liberties and their rights of freedom of speech and I would put money on those who are those bleeding hearts being the first to demand explanations as to why atrocities and personal harm has befallen them, or the country.
Frankly if you do the right thing why should you worry about this issue and also from another perspective the best AV is the person behind the keyboard.

On another note if one reads the comparison companies the tested AV's all differ from each other and their reports differ from month to month so what are you supposed to do in deciding what is the best AV?
Personally I have been with Kaspersky for getting on to five years now and it works fine for me and to boot it it is cheap too. I do of course run the on call scans and MBAM real time now that Kaspersky "plays" with it now

matts6887 said:

Ive been using AVG anti virus; and so far so good with it. I havent encountered any real issues using and running it and it was recommended by i believe it may be cnet editors as being one of the better ones they have tested and used.

I ran with the free version of AVG for a number of years and would recommend it over Avast and some others. But in the same comparison it lacked the full version's own brother AVG Inernet Security when only seeing an addon security toolbar for IE some years back. Now when looking over a good number of programs at their own sites the second on the list is "Internet Security" for each program! That will offer a firewall with web filtering or should have web filtering included.

When you hear someone say "nothing ever gets on my system!" disregard it! They may already have bugs on their own pc that they don't even know about and that can include those that disable scripting in their browsers since stealth bugs can get right past that method. The well versed malware writers already take things like that into account. It's just one more thing that illustrates that there is no actual 100% fail safe av program to find. The better softwares simply offer the best detection processes as well as filters to keep most off to start with.

I did have an issue with AVG about 5 or 6 years ago, but I only decided to try something else when I reinstalled W7 in 2012.
I was annoyed by the stupid ad banner thing always popping up.

Next time I do a total clean reinstall of Windows I may swap back to AVG.
I have it on my VMs and it seems to do the job.

ICit2lol said:

... and I would put money on those who are those bleeding hearts being the first to demand explanations as to why atrocities and personal harm has befallen them, or the country.

Agreed. :)

However I don't like the idea of being spied on by dodgy Corporate or Government personnel.

The fix I tried a couple of days ago didn't actually work (post 972).

I was still experiencing weird issues after my Avast update (like only one type of scan being available).

To fix it I:

• Downloaded a new Avast installer
• Disconnected my network
• Uninstalled Avast
• Cleaned and defragged my PC
• Installed Avast using the new installer

My PC seems to be running much smoother and Avast seems to be running correctly. :)

One thing I discovered, whilst I had no AV installed, was that my PC booted up in half the time it normally takes.

This might help in the future:

Avast - Uninstall Completely

andrew129260 said:

This might help in the future:

Avast - Uninstall Completely

Thanks for the link. :)

I had no issues uninstalling it via "Programs and Features" though.