What is the best free anti-virus programme that you can download legally?
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M$2 Answers
AVG for antivirus. In addition to this one, you might want to look into downloading Spybot Search and Destroy and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware (both free programs). Between those two, they should keep you covered darn well on the anti-spyware front. These three programs together should serve you pretty well.
For your convenience, I'll put all the links where you can download them in the source field. Hope this helps you. As someone who has many times in the past felt the sting of computer viruses and risked losing my entire life's work several times, I hope very much to others the same troubles.
Download AVG here: http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage
Download Spybot Search & Destroy here: http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html
Download Ad-Aware here: http://lavasoft.com/
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M$
http://www.mahalo.com/answers/software/what-is-the-best-free-anti-virus-anti-malware-solution
It seems AVG, Avira and Avast all have their fans, and a side-order of Spybot Search and Destroy is also recommended. In my experience Avira is good but it does a lot of nagging to try to get you to upgrade to a paid version.
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M$
I agree wholeheartedly!
Thanks! Hope those products are helping to keep your computer safe and virus/spyware free!
Malwarebytes is an excellent utility, particularly for removing rogue anti-malware/scareware, which is increasingly becoming a problem: http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
I've also found rkill quite useful for terminating malware processes that are preventing the use of anti-malware software: http://www.pcabusers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48915
The combination of AVG Free, Spybot Search & Destroy (with the optional TeaTimer installed), Spywareblaster and NoScript addon for Firefox = the perfect defense and it's FREE.
Free means manual updates. No big deal. Perfect means "if you use them" and learn a little bit about how they work so you can optimize your safety choices. But I've been using this combination for over 10 years (when it was available) and I've never had a successful attack, trojan, virus, spyware, adware or malicious script/hijack/redirect - ever.
Other tools I've used against that "beast what is the internet" included the material and software at http://grc.com (very educational, and the test for open ports is still helpful) and 2 Minute Warning http://2mw.mcafee.com/ for early alerts to problems that are coming down the pipe. (McAfee bought them out but the site still gives good info.)
On a personal note, I was annoyed by AdAware's discovery of potential problems that were actually not problems so I stopped trying it a long time ago. They may have fixed those problems but when I found the combo above I never looked back.
NOTES:
AVG Free includes a link scanner, mail attachment, contextual menu scan option, scheduled scans.
SBS&D includes an Immunize feature (preventing you from going to sites that are KNOWN to be malicious). More tools are in the advanced user menu.
TeaTimer provides registry protection that you have to specifically "allow" each change (you can tone down the protection but I don't advise it).
Spywareblaster provides a block for browser helpers (BHO's), a block Flash option and also protects you from known bad sites and more.
NoScript for Firefox is the front line defense however. No site can inject any malicious code or action if it can't run. What you 'allow' to run is up to you, making your browsing experience 100% in your control. Unbeaten in usefulness and effectiveness.