shiva

dont go back to avg its increasingly bloated, have been trying out ms security essentials and so far im impressed, spectacularly so given its ms.
the rest are great suggestions between those three and a decent av ive never needed to do any serious recovery or repair work in years

shiva

are you sure youre infected?

mikewot

Yeah but apart from all that it's pretty good huh?

shiva

must be cos millions of unsuspecting punters never uninstall their bloatware that comes included in a new machine and very often pay for the full version annually. ergo sum it must be good


not that ive ever spent hours sorting out the pc's of said unsuspecting punters because they run like treacle

Irishbeekeeper

I cannot believe no one has mentioned Kaspersky
One of the best antivirus / internet security out there (and im not saying this only coz i have its dealership :P) been using it for years and its never let me down, always catches them nice and early, is easy on the resources and very easy to uninstall
Norton's new 2013 suite, I am told is good but I have to see it to belive it
Bitdefender is good but is too resource heavy
please dont ever use free AV or cracked ones, never a good idea

UKCityGent

How many people have actually had a virus/malware ?

Ive not had anything like that for years

I think all the free scanners are much of the same thing i.e. pick up the general crap but not the serious stuff !

Bob

That I found was really good on the desktop, but on the notebook, not quite as good. Found that the battery life dropped off a fair bit, so ditched it on this little thing.

Norton is pretty poor, but for a corporate deployment, it's much better. Though if we're talking the numbers to make that kind of deployment worth while, you're better off with Sophos.

Nod/Kaspersky are both great paid options....but do you really need a paid one these days? I don't know.

Irishbeekeeper

if you never have to plug in anybody else's USB or run someone's CD/DVD then a resounding yes

also if u are a frequent torrent user or an avid porn surfer (nothing like me i assure you! )

Bob

Avast seems pretty solid on external data sources, as well as dodgy sites too though.

So for the average home user, what exactly is the benefit of paid options?

Corporates can't, I suppose folks with many home computers can't as it's usually a one or two household license kind of thing.

Boomhauer

Used many over the years.

Started with Norton (not free). A resource pig and frankly wasn't that effective either. What I hear though is that Norton and McAfee's corperate soultions are good, this coming from my in law who helps manage the networks for a well known large US corp.

Went to AVG for many years and liked it.
Have used Kasperksy and Nod32.

Using Avast right now, and soo far I like it. It found and deleted some trojans,so I ended up keeping it. It is free and regularly updates. Previously I had MS Security Essentials but ditched it when it let some trojans through.

Beakersful

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

and

http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeuse...ns/activescan/

are the backup online scanners. But seriously I just reinstall my personal computers in most instances if I get stung by something. You never know what they left behind your scanner didn't find. Your personal and banking details can't be left to chance.

ukfb

Worked in IT Security for many years and this is pretty much as it is...malware will be written to avoid detection by the most common AV software. It's a massive cash cow for the AV vendors who sell (or give away) out dated signature based, bloated software.

This site covers almost all AV vendors and is pretty much the standard testing resource for them http://www.av-test.org/.

If you have a virus or suspicious file then you can test in here on 40 or so AV products https://www.virustotal.com/en/.

Unless you seek out doggy websites/torrents then you're likely to be just as safe with nothing aside from common sense.

Working with (good) Russian hackers at the moment and there's not much that can prevent them from hacking any network or system. Next time you take some cash out at an ATM why not have quick game of Angry Birds?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZF4CnMCEsY

(turn your volume down...)

Bahtatboy

If I wasn't pissed I'd be scared