What Spyware & AntiVirus Programs do you use and Why?

**Mayet** · July 18th, 2005, 07:05 PM

I have heard a fair bit of debate lately on the pros and cons of various anti virus programs and spyware programs so i thoguht it would be interesting to hear everyone heres opinion.

What Antivirus program do you use and why?
What are it's best feature and where does it fail?
What Spyware programs do you use and how do they perform?
What programs do you know to avoid by experience?

**Ferrit** · July 18th, 2005, 07:08 PM

Norton 2005 stand alone no NIS at all
Counterspy Bought
adaware
Spybot

**Mayet** · July 18th, 2005, 07:18 PM

How do you find counterspy? Does it work from Win98 up?

I found adaware to have a couple of issues of locking on the deletion after the scan lately.

Ms Antispy is good, except it is not supported by win98 and thats still what many of my customers use.

**Ferrit** · July 18th, 2005, 07:25 PM

Ok counterspy i believe is XP/2k only and fortunately i have very very few machines with 98 left in my circle. By the time I usally get them they are so far gone they are unrecoverable. So FFR
Adaware and Spybot have been known to be corruptable in my experience. If i find anything weird I remove them and (note this) go remove the folder they are in as well reboot, redownload and then reinstall.
I havent found MS Antispy to be too usefull. Counterspy is near identical and it is at the top of the reviews for speed and accuracy

**TechZ** · July 19th, 2005, 05:40 AM

NAV 2005, not NIS, and I use Zone Alarm Pro.

NAV- It has protected my pc's for many years, and I can say have never had an infection.

ZoneAlarmPro- As a firewall its extremely good, some say it has a steep learning curve.

Spybot(Immunize Feature)/Adaware/MS AntiSpyware- Always have them installed.

Off late am using CounterSpy trial,and plan on purchasing it soon, from my experience (and some have raved on about it

) its quite good.

Not forgetting a good HOST file http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

**confus-ed** · July 19th, 2005, 05:48 AM

I'll be my usual contrary self & say that most systems would benefit much more from being flattened & starting again, than trying to clean them up, whatever you use.

Best anti spyware thingee is 'safe surfing' habits, & most anti-virus products are all a much of a muchness anyways once you unblur the distinctions between what is true viral activity & what is trojan, & folks who are a bit keen on dismissing prompts.

**TechZ** · July 19th, 2005, 07:42 AM

after reading & replying to this thread, I noticed this:

ClamWin Free Antivirus 0.86.1 - ClamWin is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine.

I understand it may not be the best AV out there, but the working with Win98 part is what drew me to it, for those users with older systems.

**Atodini** · July 19th, 2005, 09:52 AM

Originally Posted by confus-ed

Best anti spyware thingee is 'safe surfing' habits, & most anti-virus products are all a much of a muchness anyways once you unblur the distinctions between what is true viral activity & what is trojan, & folks who are a bit keen on dismissing prompts.

Hear hear!! Unfortunately though most of my users do not practice "safe surfing" as such......

Here I use basic Norton 2005, without any of the Systemworks / Internet security nonsense, plus M$ antispyware. These along with a (hardware) firewall have kept me free from infections for ages.

John

**BOB IROC** · July 19th, 2005, 02:22 PM

Norton Antivirus 2005 Basic
MS antispyware
Ad-aware.
I use a hardware firewall built into my router.

Ever since I installed MS anti-spyware my machine runs very smooth (hopefully they will keep it free) I run automated virusscan checks and spyware sweeps and all has been fine.

**Sp0cK** · July 19th, 2005, 02:50 PM

Viri Scanner:

I have tried most virus scanners and I have always gone back to NOD32.
(Works on win98 - 2003)

*WHY?
: Updates daily, not once a week like Nortan.
: Virtually no slow down on my system with auto scan.
: Uses very few resources.
: Most important, it is the only scanner I have seen to catch unknown viri consistently with out being updated.
: Catches basic spyware and keyloggers. (www.nod32.com)

Firewalls:

I have only been truely happy with Norton and Zonealarm, but if I had windows98 I would use nortan's firewall. In XP I use the built in Firewall in tangent with my Router's Firewall.

Norton's firewall has a simple interface that makes handling it fairly easy and normaly only asks for help when unknown programs try to access the net. Assuming you had it scan your HD for all internet programs.

Spyware:

I have learned that if you want to be nearly 100% clean of all spyware, keyloggers and other junk you need to run 2 or 3 dif. spyware programs.
Ones I think work well are;

*** Adaware SE
** Spybot 1.4
* M$ Antispyware

Also, to minimize the need if not nearly remove the need of useing spyware scanners simply switch your browser to Opera (www.opera.com) or to Firefox (www.mozilla.org). I can go months with either one of those browsers and nearly nerver get spyware on my system. But with 5 minutes (or less) with Internet Explorer I would find spyware on my system (nothing dangerous), but I would get infected.

**jaimicook** · July 19th, 2005, 05:40 PM

PCCillin 2005 for antivirus as well as software firewall. Linksys ethernet router w latest firmware and AdAware, Spybot & MS antispy. So far, all is well
Jim

**slgrieb** · July 19th, 2005, 06:33 PM

Well, right in with most of the pack. NAV 2005 plus Norton Firewall 2005, even though I'm behind a hardware firewall. Current versions of Ad-Aware SE Personal, Spybot S&D, and MS AntiSpyware are what I run on my own stuff, but I also have a subscription to WebRoot Spysweeper (though I don't keep it active in the system; no real time protection and I seldom run it) along with the usual assortment of misc. tools like LSPFix, HijackThis, and AutoRun.

On to the whys. NAV because only a few other programs like Nod32, Sophos, and Norman are in the same league in terms of effectiveness, but I think Symantec has better support. Online support is often enough, but sometimes you just gotta talk to a person. I don't like many of Symantec's policies in this regard, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and spend the money.

In particular, I don't like Norman's interface (though they do have US phone support), and I don't like Nod32's email-only support. Sophos also lacks US phone support. Trend Micro and McAfee seem to be improving, but don't have the track record of the top-tier vendors.

Firewall software: BlackIce is to hard to configure. Norton and ZoneAlarm firewalls both work pretty well, but as a dealer I can buy Norton for less than ZoneAlarm Pro, and since I'm behind a router, whatever firewall software I run is just not my first concern. The free ZoneAlarm is only free for personal use, and is a pain to train and configure.

Anti-spyware tools are still in the dark ages. They are about where antivirus tools were 10 or 15 years ago. Not enough information sharing between publishers, and not even general agreement on which programs are significant threats, etc. I have run SpywareBlaster, SpyHunter, Pest Patrol, Spycatcher, SpywareSweeper, MS Antispyware, Ad-Aware, Spybot, and most likely some I have forgotten, and not found one that is 100% effective. All of these will find and fix things that the others sometimes miss.

Spycatcher detects an excellent range of threats, but for many users, it is just too aggressive and may prompt them to remove needed program files. SpySweeper is way too slow, and its realtime protection requires far too many user decisions (confrim or deny changes) in routine use.

Sometimes it is more time/cost effective just to wipe the machine and start over, and sometimes you just have to; but lots of my customers are seniors (or businesses) who have files they REALLY DON'T WANT TO LOSE and (of course) haven't backed up. About twice a week, I download any updates to my Antivirus/Antispyware tools and burn them to CD-RW. It takes just a few minutes to install the programs, update them, and start scanning. I generally have 3 to 4 going at any given time, and I can let them run while I work on other things or go into the field. In real time all the scans may take 3 or 4 (sometimes more, if the machine is slow) hours, but only an hour or an hour and a half of billable time. The customer keeps their data, I get a reasonable return on my time, and we are all happy. The key to this is keeping it going like an assembly line. The more bench slots you have, the better.

Yeah time to go home when... you have yet another edit. One of the best things you can do to keep your system clean is don't download all those "free" utilities like "My Daily Horoscope" and similar stuff. Better yet, use a more secure browser like FireFox.

**confus-ed** · July 20th, 2005, 03:40 AM

Originally Posted by Sp0cK

Viri

Grammatical rant ! .. there's no such word, its VIRUSES .. however you are a vulcan so I'll let you off .. Live long & prosper ( & get some latin lessons !)

**Sp0cK** · July 20th, 2005, 08:45 AM

What is the plural of 'virus'?

It is not viri, or (which is worse) virii.

True, the word comes directly from Latin, (I took a stab at the dark when I used viri) Being Greek and American didn't help with my guess.....

... Besides, viri is the Latin word for 'men'.... but if you where to compare what a virus does and then look at men... would you see any differences?
(Matrix)

and the answer is .......... virus = > viruses

Thanks for questioning my grammar :butt: