Can You Trust Free Antivirus Software? [SPAM] can we trust it?

[mra550 0]

While it may be true that free anti-malware apps may not contain of of the features of those which are purchased, it is not necessary the case that they are inferior to their more costly brethren.Firstly, many of them are simpler versions of for-fee products, are updated along side such, and are best-of-breed for the specific single function they perform.Perhaps more important is the fact that, today, many of the for-fee products are no longer products that are optimized for a specific function, but rather suites designed to perform several functions.The downside of such is that rarely is it the case that each of the functions performed by a suite is best-of breed. With a bit of effort, one can do better by carefully selecting separate apps for protecting against spyware, adware, and spam.Furthermore, suites tend to be much more likely to be resources hogs that does a collection of separate apps.I personally find that, for protecting a PC, the combination of a good firewall - perimeter hardware for a LAN; local software for stand-alones - along with AVG Free (without their Tool Bar) and SpyBot Search & Destroy are more than adequate.

[Zagubadu? 0]

Yea I never liked Windows Firewall as it stops a lot of the different stuff I do on my computer from working correctly. I know you can make exceptions but it never seems to work for me. I figure if its free and there are others that charge the free version of AV must be missing out on something. If it was just as good as the ones you pay for then why would the ones that cost money even exist. I think they can sureley be trusted, but just don't be surprised when your system gets infested because you free AV missed something. Anyways VIPRE has been the only program I've ever needed. I recommend it to anyone looking for a really good anti virus that uses very little resources.

[deadmad7 4]

If you have a free antivirus, for one thing, you won't have anyone to call if things go haywire, or if you need disinfection help in the event something does sneak past your PC's defenses. Most free apps give support only on online forums, though Avast offers e-mail support (and Microsoft plans to when Security Essentials launches); Avast users can submit online support tickets, too. AVG gives paid phone support, but the $50-per-call fee costs more than most paid antivirus apps. Some free utilities have fewer scanning options than paid apps from the same company do. For example, Avira's paid antivirus program will scan http traffic to catch Web-borne malware before it hits your hard drive, but the company's free AntiVir Personal version won't. If I were you, i would decide upon AVAST Free edition (My computer's been running it for about 3 years now, no BIG virus yet) or upon Norton for about $50 bucks.

Edited February 5, 2010 by deadmad7 (see edit history)

[webishqiptar 0]

I never trust free things, if you install Avira on your computer you will eventually get infected and hard to disinfect then . I have recently purchased a Nod32 antivisrus but they blocked my username because of incorrect data when registered. I payed 30$ for that. Terrible support from croatian website of Nod32. Now i switched to my all favorite Kaspersky. But with windows vista things got better than on my xp. Even with free antivirus got protected.

[shadowx 0]

abdultalip, please, please dont make your text huge and blue like that, stick to the normal sized font please!!

Free security is in fact better than paid for. I have a thread somewhere here on T17 in the computer or internet section which shows results from a test including names like norton, kapersky and comodo... 50% of all the tested free softwares (a grand total of 8 were tested) got 90% or more. The two top tested softwares in the whole list were free and the only ones which scored 100%, that was comodo and one other. I think something like 25-30 of the softwares tested were paid for, only 4 of those got 90% or above, and i dont think norton, mcaffee or kapersky were in the 90%+ group.

Avast will update sometimes 3 or more times per day, at the very least you will get one update per day.

Free software is almost always better than paid. Why? Because most of it is open source so it is written by perhaps hundreds of people all fixing bugs, adding features etc... and because it isnt locked down more people develop addons (think firefox Vs IE....) and so you get many, many more features.

Anyone that pays for software IMHO is an idiot... Sorry guys... I dont like AVG because the control panel when i used it last just looked like some dodgy windows 95 app with no power. IT does work well however and i think it did get 90%+ in the tests.

To be secure i recommend Avast antivirus which contains its own shields which act a little like firewalls in that they cut connections if a virus is being downloaded from a known malicious site (doesnt give false positives, i think it has a blacklist) and then add Comodo firewall and bundled AV on top of that and you have a double layer protection. So far nothing has got through that.

Comodo can be a pain at first because you need to either allow or deny apps internet access, but anyone capable of installing it is capable of figuring out what to allow or not


EDIT: Wow, you people actually WANT to pay money for something that isnt as good as free software?

I am looking forward to buy a premium since it has all the features that you will beneeding to secure your computer from harsh virus

Why are you looking forward to buying something?! Thats just not right, you are going to pay money for a piece of software that will slow your PC down, let virusses through and then tell you it cant remove them? Clever... I will dig up that test i found and show you how kapersky and nod compare to comodo....

Here it is: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

See how AVG actually failed the test, and kapersky did well. I got the two confused, my bad.

The test basically has several levels whereby a program will try to bypass the security. IE the kill test is a program that tries to simply kill the antivirus program. If it were a real attack your AV is now useless.... AVG didnt get past the first level of that... Nice....

Check the link

Another test showed that avast ranks with an 3 star rating out of 3 along with kapersky, windows one care and a few others for detection rates, symantec, mcafee and Sophos all rated as 1 star, or "standard" and those are all very expensive (relatively speaking) systems, where as kapersky is fairly cheep (my mum got a 3 pcs for Ł24 deal with two of her friends) and avast is completely free.

AVG scored a 2 star rating out of three.

If you MUST pay to feel secure (then you're an idiot but...) go for something cheap like kapersky, it is fairly good but Avast is still better