i hate norton and mcafee products.

i use nod32 on my home system

i sell panda at work

commandondemand is also good


just because norton is more expensive.   please don't believe its better

Knoppix is probably the ultimate antispyware/antivirus/antitrojan/antihijack software in the whole wide world.

Seriously.

Attackers can't infect it with anything on a permanent basis.  It is impossible, since it runs off CD media, not your hard drive.  If someone somehow breaks in (never seen anything suspicious happen when I run it), you just reboot and you're all clean again.

The only negative is that you have to learn a few commands if you want to save stuff to your hard drive.

If you need to use some Windows software, just take the CD out, unplug yourself from the network for your own safety, and reboot.  Voila, you're back in Windows.

I recommend staying with Knoppix 3.7 if you can still find it.  It's more stable than the newer versions.

avast.com/ is rated the best. Oh and it's free.

Use these in conjunction. Set them the scanners to automatically scan every week at a time you are not using your computer. Use active ports to occaisionally check and to familiarize yourself with what should be connected to your box and what shouldn't.

Spybot Search and Destroy
Search your hard disk and Registry for threats to your security and privacy.


Active Ports
Monitor all open TCP/IP and UDP ports on your local computer.


Spyware Doctor
Remove Spyware, Adware, Trojan horses & Keyloggers with this popular and fast utility.

FreeBSD.

Quoted: FreeBSD.

I'll see that and raise you an OpenBSD.


Zone Alarm's better than nothing. There really aren't any decent application-level firewalls for Windows unfortionately. If your broadband router has a built in firewall, I would suggest taking a few and set it up as well.

Quoted: Knoppix is probably the ultimate antispyware/antivirus/antitrojan/antihijack software in the whole wide world. Seriously. Attackers can't infect it with anything on a permanent basis.  It is impossible, since it runs off CD media, not your hard drive.  If someone somehow breaks in (never seen anything suspicious happen when I run it), you just reboot and you're all clean again. The only negative is that you have to learn a few commands if you want to save stuff to your hard drive. If you need to use some Windows software, just take the CD out, unplug yourself from the network for your own safety, and reboot.  Voila, you're back in Windows. I recommend staying with Knoppix 3.7 if you can still find it.  It's more stable than the newer versions.

Fuck Knoppix - Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Fedora is where its at.

Avoid Norton's Internet Security programs. They suck. Read the reviews at Amazon, Cnet, ZdNet.

AVG
Spybot S&D
BHOdemon

And firefox.

I will not tell you the "best" AV, because it's very subjective. ALL antivirus programs have waylaid PC installs; and all of them have probably worked perfect on other PC's as well. There simply isn't one that is better than the others. You can find online reviews testing and finding every one good and bad, the reviews are nearly worthless.

....Some people of course wait until their PC's are already infected to install AV programs, and that often leads to a world of sheet--and a lot of AV will make a mess of everything trying to install on a infected OS,,, so I don't include that in my comment here. What I mean is, I have seen or heard pretty much EVERY AV program out there jack up a clean system. So cross your fingers, make a save point and dive right in! ;)

That said I will say a few things I do know:

----I used to have F-Secure on my desktop up until a couple months ago and didn't like it because my preferred firewall program is ZoneAlarm, and F-Secure isn't compatible with that. There is a trick you can do to install them both but one or the other may not work properly. This information is accurate as of a couple months ago. .....I got F-Secure antivirus (not the whole security thing, which I usually don't bother with getting the whole packages, just the AV scanners) and F-Secure included a "spyware protection" thing that is basically the same as AdAware, just with F-Secure's name on it. F-Secure AV also included a "registry protection utility" that would inform you on boot if any registry entries had been [suspiciously] altered, and would ask if you wanted to undo them.

----I have a newer laptop that had a free install of McAfee trial on it(which seemed to work well enough) but when the 30-day trial was out, it was not renewable as a regular McAfee install. Pardon my French but Fuck That. I refused to install another full-pay year of McAfee just out of spite (-also after I uninstalled McAfee and rebooted, there were still at least 3 McAfee processes in there on startup, that I need to go in and hunt down sooner or later; I just bolcked them in ZoneAlarm for now).

----What I got (for both these PC's) was a 3-license CD for Norton AV 2006, for about $90. It installed on both just fine, but it has one main problem (for me) right now: inbound scanning of server-based email doesn't work on either PC--the AV program prevents your username and password from being sent to the mail server. You can still scan email attachments, it just doesn't do it automatically like it should. You must do it manually--but if you aren't using Outlook anyway, activeX stuff won't run on preview anyway, so it is still workable, you just have to be aware of that bit of info. This (inbound email scanning) problem is on both 2K and XP systems running all versions of Norton AV 2006 (the single program and the bundled "security suite" packages) and doesn't seem to depend on the email client you are using (it's a problem for all of them). At the place where I got it, Norton and McAfee were both running right at the same prices; $49 for single-user or $90 for 3-license.

----Also I have noticed that I have to exclude my OSx86 image folders from full-scans, or the Norton AV 2006 engine conks out and shuts down. It's odd but that's not a big deal really.

----Also what I dislike about most of the "big" programs like McAfee and Norton is that they are default set to be very "in your face" about anything they find is a security risk, like not having Windows Updates and Windows Firewall turned on. It can take a bit of searching to find out how to turn that crap off. Norton for example has something called "Norton Protection Center" that runs in the systray or task bar and doesn't really tell you much of anything--it's for managing the "internet security suite", but I only got the AV. So it doesn't tell me anything that the AV systray icon wouldn't anyway,,,, but I can't figure out how to get rid of the Protection Center icon. >:(
~

Quoted: Quoted: Knoppix is probably the ultimate antispyware/antivirus/antitrojan/antihijack software in the whole wide world. Fuck Knoppix - Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Fedora is where its at.

I can't -- my dick is bigger than the hole in the CD.

I haven't gotten around to trying that Kubuntu liveCD.  The other two are full installs.  The great thing about the liveCDs is that if he needs to, he can switch back to his Windows installation.  Not everyone wants to dual-boot, and besides, there *are* people out there who can exploit vulnerabilities in Linux and its associated software;  as a liveCD, all they can do is dick around with the in-memory copy, which evaporates when the machine gets rebooted.

I've never understood the distribution religious wars.  Pretty much all of them work fine;  it's just a question of what they install by default, and how they manage updates.  Debian's system (and hence Knoppix's, since it derived from Debian) has been pretty nice.

Fix  iT  and Zone Alarm n a good router with a hardwire wall

Quoted: Well, I more or less decided NOT to extend the warranty on my Dell Inspiron 1100 Laptop computer ORIGINAL THREAD - Click Here.as it really doesn't go anywhere(in lieu of a desktop PC), and all I really do is surf/internet-banking/play World Of Warcraft with it. I've had Norton Anti-Virus and currently use McAfee Security Center...is there anything better?

Been using McAfee for five years now with no problems (Virus scan) tried spamkiller but let it go after one year since it was a pain to use and set up. So with five years with no virus's getting though I would say stay with McAfee, I went to XP from ME last year.

Quoted: Fuck Knoppix - Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Fedora is where its at.

I've got your *ubuntu right here, but you're going to have to take off your Fedora to suck it.

If you use Windows and are on open networks you should really consider reformatting and reimaging your machine every few months.  It can end up being faster and cheaper than trying to hunt down spyware and backdoor programs.  Use a virus scanner, MS Destroyer, and MS firewall in the meanwhile.

If you are on a wired network consider getting a physical firewall for it.  Many wired and wireless routers can act as a physical router as can a cheap, old linux box.

GunLvr

Well, pretty much anything has to be better than Norton. I tried it for a couple of days then switched
to Zone Alarm.

It's nice to see some fellow Unix users out there. If I can't have Solaris, my backup OS is OpenBSD.

Sam

IMHO, ALL the "suites" suck and I'd rather have AVG +Spybot + Zone Alarm instead of the memory hog programs I've seen

Quoted: i hate norton and mcafee products. i use nod32 on my home system i sell panda at work commandondemand is also good just because norton is more expensive.   please don't believe its better

I use Panda. Do you find it to be a good product? Obivously not the best, since you use nod32.

...is there anything better?

Mac OS

Quoted: ...is there anything better? Mac OS

Thats because nobody wants to hack a mac. I mean you can't do anything on them, so why try?

Quoted: Quoted: ...is there anything better? Mac OS Thats because nobody wants to hack a mac. I mean you can't do anything on them, so why try?

Mac stole my inner child (hilarious)

Quoted: ...is there anything better? Mac OS

You must have missed the 2 recent worms and the 20 security fixes Apple had to issue this week... Apples security through obscurity days are over.

Best Internet Security Program?

Linux :)

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: ...is there anything better? Mac OS Thats because nobody wants to hack a mac. I mean you can't do anything on them, so why try? Mac stole my inner child (hilarious)

That is some funny shit.

Quoted: IMHO, ALL the "suites" suck and I'd rather have AVG +Spybot + Zone Alarm instead of the memory hog programs I've seen

Ya, What he said.
Also firefox w/ no script extention.

Quoted: Knoppix is probably the ultimate antispyware/antivirus/antitrojan/antihijack software in the whole wide world. Seriously.

"We" know, but look who you're talking to.  

From the 11/28/05 edition of  eWeek:

"SYSTEM LOCKDOWN - eWeek Labs evaluates the potency of a powerful (but complex) system safeguard and finds that restricting user privileges significantly reduces malware woes."

In otherwords, Windows is your best "internet security program" if you'll stop surfing the web on an Adminstrator account.