Antivirus protection

2 Mar 2005

My antivirus subscription is ending in two weeks and I am not sure whether I should continue with Norton or switch to McAfee.
I am annoyed with Norton because it cannot get rid of Gator adware and some types of threats that come with browsing naughty sites. Also when I first installed it, it caused havoc with my laptop and I had to reload it but Norton said I had to pay up again because you were only allowed to load the programme once! I didn't pay but I spent quite a long time on the phone trying to get support.
Is McAfee any better, I wonder? What are people's experiences using these two programmes?

2 Mar 2005

Sorry, couldn't resist posting that,

2 Mar 2005

Quote by Parrot
Sorry, couldn't resist posting that,

:rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao:

2 Mar 2005

OK, serious post this time.
The link below is to a page maintained by a techie type person on the ebay chat forums.

There is all sorts of stuff in there from Anti-virus to spyware cleaners.
She is the person we all turn to for this kind of stuff.

2 Mar 2005

Yoy could try AVG, its free and can be downloaded form the Internet. Try this link

Think I also saw a full version of it on one of the front covers of a computing magazine!!
Hope this helps!

2 Mar 2005

I used to have Norton but dumped it in favour of a free firewall, free spyware programme and NOD32 anti-virus. It might sound a bit more complicated but Norton and its competitors are too expensive in my view.
Norton isn't going to solve your Gator problem so you should delete it and other nasties with Spybot Search & Destroy which is free or Ad-Aware which is also free or Spy Sweeper which is free for 30 days . You can get a free firewall from Sygate . With that you then just need an anti-virus programme and I use NOD32 @ Â£23 a year .

3 Mar 2005

I have not used any AV product for 5 years, but I do have a firewall....
Apart from 1 well known loop hole in the windows TCP/IP stack no virus can start to infect unless you run something... I dont download anything unless its from a site that I trust (ie I've paid for something from say MS or adobi et. al.)
There have been a couple of hacks with IE that can cause a site with special malformed html headers and code to "break in" but that only potentially opens you up to a virus (1)... but if you dont often trawl hacker and cracker sites you are un-likely to get them... or perhaps i've been lucky or just dont surf the web as much as I used to!
The best virus reciently was because people just accepted files from people in there messy list, and clicked on them after downloading without looking at the type of file, and all the AV's missed it lol

... if its not a graphic I dont touch it with a barge pole and just because it says " " does not mean its a pic!!!!!
Unless you are under a concentrated hack ( you run a web site) or you download freewear you are very very very unlikely to ever pick up a virus.
The only "viruses" that have ever been picked up on my PC with an on-line scan have been in the temporary or internet object cache system... good job I never clicked on the "run this, download this, or run this..." lol.
(1) these are sophisticated hacks and are very specialist so "kiddie script junkies" wont have a clue how to use them and thats where the biggest problems come from.
Touches wood, cos I know I'm going to regret this post, lol