BellaOnline Forums Computers Virus & Spam Best free antivirus and anti-malware software

PC Magazine just published a big feature on the best free software.

Their list of the best free Antivirus and Anti-Malware software (specifically) includes:

avast! 4 Home Edition - www.avast.com
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition - free.grisoft.com
Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Classic - www.free-av.com
HijackThis - www.trendsecure.com
NanoScan - www.nanoscan.com
ThreatFire AntiVirus - www.threatfire.com
Trend Micro HouseCall - housecall.trendmicro.com

Anyone ever tried any of these? Any personal experiences?

Yup, I agree with you dude thank for this.

I've been using AVG (Grisoft) for many years now and wouldn't use any other anti-virus (their free version is just as good as the bought one). I've only ever been caught by one virus (and it was my fault).

As for spyware - free programs - people seem divided between Spybot and Spyware Dr. Anybody have any experience to share?

Hi, Thanks for the valuable info, actually I was looking that and now I have Thanks Again.

With all those antivirus software programs it is good to have something other than IE as your browser...like Firefox.

I do this for a living... Avira blows the others - along with most commercial software packages - away. You can check out say, AV comparatives and take a look at the retroactive tests to see why. Avira is also faster and far less intrusive, which I find to be a plus : )

I like the Spyware Dr. I was PC and got tons of spyware and adware. I switched to Mac. I do not need any Anti-virus or anti-spyware. Mac totally rocks.

That is very true, that most virusses are targeted towards PCs since PCs have such a market share. So Macs are often immune

AVG is garbage, I can't believe no one has heard of Kaspersky. The only AV software I saw in that list that could MAYBE even compete with Kaspersky is Trend Micro. HIjack this is good if you know which keys you should be deleting... Unless your paranoid and delete every key... Your PC should run fine LoL.

Linux is another one that is pretty good. Since Mac and Linux are both based off of Unix. However a large portion of the masses are dependent on Windows products, hence why more viruses are written for Windows based PC's.

As for spyware - free programs - people seem divided between Spybot and Spyware Dr. Anybody have any experience to share?

Megan, I've used Spybot Search & Destroy ever since it came out and have never had a single problem with spyware that I know of. I've even donated money to them because I feel that they are doing us all such a service by providing it for free and keeping me spyware free for all these years. They update it VERY regularly and I really appreciate that effort.

And besides, I think the name just turns me on. Search & Destroy LOL, gotta love it. It sounds ominous and aggressive, which is exactly how I feel about spyware in general.

I've never used Spyware Dr. so I can't comment on it.

My personal experience is that AVG, Spybot Search & Destroy, Kapersky, and Microsoft Security Essentials are all pretty good resources for the money, which of course, is $0.

I wouldn't say that AVG is garbage, but it is very slow and isn't as amazing as hype would have you believe.

[quote=Megan_Embroidery]I've been using AVG (Grisoft) for many years now and wouldn't use any other anti-virus (their free version is just as good as the bought one). I've only ever been caught by one virus (and it was my fault). As for spyware - free programs - people seem divided between Spybot and Spyware Dr. Anybody have any experience to share? [/quote] Does AVG still have free version? I cannot find the free version to Download?

Hi dazzling,

Yes, AVG does still offer a great, comprehensive free version - you can click AVG Free to reach the download page.

Let us know what you think of it!

Surprised MalWareBytes.com didn't make the list...

I used AVG for a long time, but after some combination of updates and changes on my PC, I went through a period where some part of AVG kept eating up all my RAM. No matter what I did to try to reconfigure it, I couldn't get past this problem, and soon discovered that others had had the same problem, so I got rid of it.

I've been using PCTools since then, but did get attacked recently and had to install MalWareBytes to clean it up. After MWB was done, however, I ran PCTools again, and it still found some traces of the problem. Maybe using multiple tools is the only hope!

--Maria

Hi Maria,
I think that using multiple AV programs is the only way to go, really. Every AV program has a vulnerability, so having more than one is more likely to catch any weak spots.

Great tip!