Protecting Your (and your clients) PC - for those of you on a budget

[Bryce W]

Protecting Your (and your clients) PC
For those on a budget

(this post was originally by Mercutio and Wastaz from my other forum Anime-Forums.com)
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Every once and awhile, there is a thread about computer security. And I felt like writing a very simple quick guide to helping users with a budget get a jump start on protecting thier pc from spyware, viruses etc.

1.) Virus Protection

Avast 4 Home Edition is the perfect tool for protecting your pc, not only is it free but it runs full time resident scanners and can run a scan at boot to rid your computer of those nasty nagging viruses.

Download:
http://www.avast.com/eng/down_home.html


2.) Firewall

While there is no better protection than setting up a router for your internet to your current computer (direct connecting to the internet is just asking for it in our times) I can suggest to you a good free firewall for home use. Kerio is a great, light-weight firewall that wont bog down your virtual memory while still providing great protection. It can be found here for free.

Download:
http://www.kerio.com/kpf_download.html



3.) Spyware / Adware

While this is a known fact to 70% of the tech forum regulars, I still had to add on Ad-aware and Spybot to this list. Personally being my top picks in this catagory. For those who do not have both I urge you to run off and download them now here.

Spybot Download:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html

Ad-aware Download:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/


4) Stop using Internet explorer.

Its a known fact that its got more security holes in itself than any other single piece of software known to man. By not using IE you'll decrease the risk of getting spyware/hijacking programs/weird other crap by A LOT. Yes, this does mean that you should not be using any browser based on IE, that includes things like Avant browser that, while being a little bit better, still is based on a flawed ground.

Mozilla and Firefox download:
http://www.mozilla.org/

Opera download:
http://www.opera.com/

 

[Stealth]

As an alternative to one of the programs:

1.) Virus protection
While considered a business solution, Sophos Plc offers their antivirus as a free trial, and won't block you from installing a fresh version over an old, outdated one (as far as my experience goes). The AV scanner is spartan in design, but very powerful, doesn't have a "hair trigger" and generally does a good job. The only minor drawback is that the background AV scanner, while very quick to react on incoming viruses, does use about 30 MB of RAM, so it's not for the weaker machines.

 

[Bryce W]

The only minor drawback is that the background AV scanner, while very quick to react on incoming viruses, does use about 30 MB of RAM, so it's not for the weaker machines.

For weaker machines, Id recommend AVG Antivirus at http://free.grisoft.com

Its extreamly powerful and by personal experience have found that it picks up alot of things that Norton AV missed.

 

[Stealth]

Norton AV is a piece of software best skipped. Bad AV detection and cleaning engine, wastes system and pagefile memory, has too many memory leaks, and it's payware on top of all the problems.

 

[bongo]

i begin to use avast now ..i once used norton antivirus but i think that despite need to pay,the protection isn't realli good..avast gives free updates too..

 

[a1whs.com]

As an alternative to one of the programs:

1.) Virus protection
While considered a business solution, Sophos Plc offers their antivirus as a free trial, and won't block you from installing a fresh version over an old, outdated one (as far as my experience goes). The AV scanner is spartan in design, but very powerful, doesn't have a "hair trigger" and generally does a good job. The only minor drawback is that the background AV scanner, while very quick to react on incoming viruses, does use about 30 MB of RAM, so it's not for the weaker machines.

I have used spohos before and trust me you do not want to install that software on your pc. There are way better softwares than sophos.

And about spywares, just do not visit those sites that are not worth visting and you know are full of such spywares, i dont use any spyware cleaner on my pc cause i know where to go and where not to and what to click and what not to. So if you play smart you never get pc related issues, oh and for gods sake remove google toolbar and alexa toolbar else you will certainly have your pc run into trouble.

 

[Stealth]

What exactly makes you speak against Sophos? In the past five years that I've been using it, it hasn't ever let a single trojan, virus, worm or even joke-program slip, anbd the background scanner isn't that much of a memory hog if you have at least 512MB RAM.

 

[bongo]

I think sophos was pretty good as well as others..the background scanner was good and accurate so of course it would need a little ram..reasonable..hmm..

 

[a1whs.com]

Spohos is the main scanner on all the univ/college pcs i involved with but it doesnt ever delete that file it, just keeps poping a message this found here that found there on daily basic but doesnt take action to remove it. Maybe cause its server edition and clients pc dont have option to remove the files. But i am on p3 and i consider only those programs as suitable that dont kill my pc, not everyone has p4 these days . But F-secure works good and i think even better than sophos.

 

[Stealth]

Since it's a uni network chances are it doesn't have erase permissions. I've seen it happen several times when the files had been on a power user or administration portion of the Documents and Settings, or if the files belonged to another user.

 

[gunslinger]

The only problem i have with avast is that its a little to sensitive, flaging harmless things as viruses sometimes.