Kaspersky used to be soo great, like, 7 years ago. Everything could be customized and used very little resources. I used to run Kasper + Zone alarm or Comodo, but sadly it turned into a resource hog like Norton. I should mention that this was years ago, so they may have changed it back.

I remember dropping Zone Alarm for the same reason.

so what's a good lightweight recommendation for antivirus then? I currently only use MSE and malware and spybot S&D

FYI, Kaspersky is 4.99 on amazon too

tbh I would just do a quick read of the monthly/yearly reports on http://www.av-comparatives.org/ and pick one of the best performing there.

Kaspersky and ESET consistently obtain top scores in almost all categories so I guess those are the ones I would recommend.

ESET performance test shows its just a tiny bit more resource heavy than MSE so I don't really think it makes a difference.

Personally I dont care for it being much lightweight because I have plenty of resources and prefer it to be a solid software, some say ESET is a bit resource heavy, I have used it on multiple computers and never noticed anything particular. MSE is great already in the sense it is very lightweight and kinda does the job, coupled with spybot and malwarebytes I dont think you have a bad combo at all.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7bdxlltdd1r676u6o1_500.gif

flippers, multiple people refuted his post and you still respond with that? tisk tisk

Shocka, your first post made it sounds like you did nothing to prevent attacks but then posted in your follow up that use multiple things like ad-blocker and do yearly scans. So some of my post was based off you doing nothing but being careful with which sites you use and not opening random attachments.

Now, I'm sure you're aware updates don't always roll out as soon as an exploit is detected, right? virus signatures will always be way ahead of windows, flash or java updates. It's like being in a car accident, it only takes once. And then when you do your yearly scan and find the threat it's way too late.

You can keep doing what you're doing and maybe never get infected, but it's not a risk I'm going to take at this point in my life. I have way too much to protect. I've seen many long time secure sites get a bad injected ad or simple picture/gif that was infected by a 3rd party so these things do get through. I've seen enough outbreaks with clients to know better and that the damage can be quick.

Contradiction? Um, what.... Antivirus protection is NOT the same as taking minor precautionary measures. If it was the same, you wouldn't be using antivirus, would you? When did I state I don't initiate anything at all to ensure my computer is patched? Assumptions based on bad correlation.

I'm sorry, maybe I live in a different computer world than you do. When does this happen? And if it is happening, don't you think I would have experienced it at least ONCE within a 4 year time span? You all are way overdoing this idea that viruses and trojans attack without any initiation from the user.

The protection you need is common sense.

I never stated that I do nothing. Again, you and other people assumed I did. Virus protection is an active process 24/7 as long as your computer stays on. This is nothing near an ad-blocker or disabling java.

What? Analogy failure. Car accidents are very often, out of your control. I've been in 3 accidents so far, all of which were NOT my fault. Protecting yourself from viruses is in your control, I'd say almost 100% of the time. Sure there might be some very rare time where this horror story that you and other people are presenting might come true, where a virus is so strong and sneaky that it cannot be stopped. But really? Stop the exaggeration...

Way too much to protect, hmmm. And if that is true, wouldn't you have multiple backups on multiple different resources that aren't connected in any way? And if you do, compromising your current PC wouldn't be that much of hit, would it? I actually keep all my "personal" stuff on a different computer and copies of it on multiple hard drives and a server. And that's not even necessarily about being scared of viruses; it's about redundancy and how important my stuff is to me, just in case of hardware failure.

Btw, Mr. Security and everyone else. I am fully aware of what these viruses/malware can do to a system. I help people, at least once a week, remove infections off their computer. I'm internal IT support for my company, and ironically enough, our antivirus solution that we use DOES NOT catch half the stuff that comes in. We are currently in the process of moving toward Sophos, but who knows if we will be successful in that migration. I've been working at this company a little over two years now, and every person's computer that I have cleaned (from viruses/malware) has been the result of user error.

Oh please, we didn't assume anything, your first post was pretty fucking clear that you didn't do anything to protect yourself aside from being careful. Don't turn this around on us making assumptions, lol.

And "Wouldn't be that much of a hit"??? It's not my personal data I'm worried about losing, it's my banking and work info/passwords being stolen as I type them in. We're not talking about doing backups here, we're talking about someone trying to actively access our systems and stealing contact/connection info. Have you ever had your identity stolen before? It's a nightmare to get out of that hole if they run up your credit and start getting loans out in your name.

Getting a virus can be just as out of your control as a car accident. Most of the time the site that's been injected has no idea it's happening. Sure 99% of the time it' user error, but that's not the one I worry about, it's the 1%.

And I really hope you aren't connecting to your work (VPN or not) on a PC that doesn't have virus protection. You, being the IT support person, should be very aware of this. In fact, you shouldn't be letting anyone onto your work network without an active firewall and anti-virus program installed and doing scans every few days at a minimum. And no split tunneling, please.

I did your job over 15 years ago, so there's not much you're going to tell me I don't already know. But I'll continue to bite as long as you keep up the replies.

Why do you have a need to attack people for no apparent reason?

Kaneco disagreed with me 1st and Kuza jumped in to imply I (or anyone else) is stupid for not using antivirus. Who attacked who?

TO be fair I did say it was dumb not to have some sort of protection. And I just don't agree with you telling people they don't need it.

If a doctor told people bad medical advice and they had an illness because of that advice, that doctor would get sued. So as a person in IT, you should not be telling people to avoid virus protection. That's just bad advice.

I love how people are minus fragging me for telling them the truth about their own security. :) I guess no good deeds go un-punished.

Hasn't a lot changed since 15 years ago? And I'm pretty sure that hackers and malware jerks can always come up with better ways to attack a person, considering that it always happens and then the AV companies issue a definition update after they figure out what they are doing a week later. But it keeps happening, they will always figure out a way around it, so you can never be safe unless you don't connect to the internet. BAN THE INTERNET!

I had nod32 running constantly for a couple of years a while ago and then Symantec AV running for several years, and the several times it warned me about something was when I stupidly clicked on some BS download link that was obviously not what it really was. Of course now I know what is legit and what is not which is why I haven't had a problem in many years without using an AV, but back then, I didn't have much common sense when it came to using the internet. It's nice to not deal with an anti-virus that slows down startup, and a lot of the time comes back with false positives when you know what you are downloading, visiting websites that are actually legit, and downloading torrents without having the AV block them or some of the files in them. It's annoying when you are trying to install a program and it wants you to disable your anti-virus or it will block it.

But what the crap do I know, I am just a turkey vulture.

I don't quite follow you. You mention in 15 years they have come up with better ways to attack you, but then you say you no longer use anti-virus. But it's good to know those programs have also come a long way in the last 15 years, and aren't as much of a hassle they used to be.

I disagreed with you because as kuza said simply put is bad advice.

Malware today comes in all forms and flavors, heck there are masked image files with malware, even .pdf files can have malware injected in them. Recommending no use of anti virus/anti malware is bad advice.

We're also not talking about malware that will mess up your pc or delete some files, there's way more advanced malware which the only purpose as kuza said its to steal personal and bank information live and then it self destructs never to be found again.

I congratulate you that you have never found a single infected file on your unprotected pcs in 4 years (which I doubt), but you will remember the stupidity of your statements if what I meantioned above does happen to you (which I seriously hope it doesn't).

I am saying that I am sure that IT practices have changed a lot in the last 15 years so it's hard to compare things people do now with what they did back then.

And yea attackers will always find quicker and better ways to attack users, and by the time a definition update comes out that handles this new threat, many thousands are already infected, and these are mostly the people who don't have too much common sense when it comes to the internet.

I would agree with you if I stepped away from IT for 15 years, but in that time I worked my way up through the levels to the top where I sit now. I design network security solutions for "clients". So when I advice you to secure yourself, I'm not just rambling off stuff from a low level IT position. Nor can I sit idly by while others give bad advice.

And definitions come out daily, where software patches can take days to months to come out. Sometimes vendors will outright refuse to fix exploits because it will cost them more to fix it then to just leave it until the next roll out. Did you not read/watch fight club before? Do you remember what his job was?

I will quote wiki fr you;

For worms, viruses, Trojans and other zero-day malware attacks, the vulnerability window follows this time line:

1. The developer creates software containing an unknown vulnerability.
2. The attacker finds the vulnerability before the developer does (or while the developer is aware of but has neglected or been unable to fix it).
3. The attacker writes an exploit while the vulnerability is either not known to the developer or known but still not closed (e.g., due to an internal assessment of the threat's potential damage costs being lower than the costs of developing a fix), usually also using and distributing it.
4. The developer or the public becomes aware of the exploited vulnerability and the developer is forced to start working on a fix, if still not working on one.
5. The developer releases the fix.

I'm telling people to not go to the doctor unless needed. You're telling them to use the doctor daily. And even a doctor will tell you, that is stupid. Because what does a doctor do? He can give you antibiotics to remove infections. What does antivirus do? Gives you updated virus definitions to remove infections.

Can you not take precautionary measures to keep yourself healthy? Or do you go to the doctor every day and make him constantly check for any virus you might have obtained in the past 24 hours? How about practice good hygiene, similarly to surfing clean websites. How about eat healthier, similarly to downloading clean files. And hey, when you feel sick and you aren't getting better, going to the doctor is reasonable. Similarly, when your computer is acting up and normal maintenance isn't helping, running a virus scan is reasonable.

Want to use anymore analogies? It's slow at work today.

MSE + mbam or bust~

Ok, your arguments have gone from bad to outright stupid. I would fire you on the spot after hearing your arguments. You should not be in charge of any desktop support period.

Anti-virus programs BLOCK the attacks, they don't just remove them. Daily definitions are the same as practicing good hygiene if we want to stick with the analogy.

What you're suggesting people do is only go to the doctor after they have been infected, it's too late then. Anti-virus is to protect you from getting the virus in the first place.

Next you're going to tell us vaccines are bad. People get the flu shot to prevent getting the flu, you can't get it after you have the flu.

edit: and you realize the doctor can't give you anything for a virus, right? Antibiotics only fight bacterial infections. So if you're going to go along with my analogies, at least understand them.

Thats actually prety good.

I'd love for the people minus fragging me so quickly to jump in at anytime and explain to me where I'm wrong. Maybe I'll learn something. :)

Sigh. How old are you? I think you might be senile. Good hygiene will block germs. Your immune system, blocks germs. Do you need to go to the doctor to practice good hygiene? Updating your browser/windows/java/etc, is NOT antivirus blocking anything.

I'm suggesting people take care of themselves so they don't get infected in the first place. Which has nothing to do with the doctor, it has to do with common sense. Same thing with how to avoid viruses/malware.

lol, oh dear. you want to compare influenza to random computer malware? First of all, the flu vaccine is recommended for high-risk groups, such as children, the elderly, health care workers, and people who have chronic illnesses. Similarly, a computer with no updates or patches installed that is way more susceptible to acquiring malware. And I'm pretty sure if there was a known super FLU in the computer world, everyone would run a "flu shot" fix on their system once year to prevent it from intruding.

hey, want to know a good preventative measure to the flu? Wash your fucking hands. Holy shit, does that require a doctor? Maybe some sort of anti-virus shampoo that you need to use every day that gets into your blood stream and deflects any dirt or debris that comes near you. Nice invention!

Ok, now you can fire me, boss.

you completely missed the point. Call me senile all you want, but your reasoning is the level of a toddler. My 5yr old is more capable of a valid argument than you are.

Anti-virus is like the vaccine, you're completely stopping it before you get infected. What you are doing is just washing your hands, it's just barley protecting you. So if you have the choice to protect your bank account with a flu shot, you'd just continue washing your hands hoping you don't get infected. You obviously don't have much worth protecting.

I really hope the people plus fragging you follow your advice and not mine. I guess learning a lesson the hard way is better then learning from your elders.

one time I visited a typically safe website that was hacked and injected with malicious things and it tried to dl a trojan but MSE blocked it

my only virus experience in 10 years of having a pc

how often are vaccines used? mhmmm. About as often as antivirus should be used, only when absolutely necessary (once a year). I'm glad you agreed with me indirectly, genius...

antivirus is good

using an antivirus once a year doesn't prevent virus/malware all year, wheras a vaccine once a year prevents an infection (from the proper virus strain) for some extended period of time (i'm not going to pretend I know how long, depends on the vaccine. the flu virus is constantly evolving which is why we get a new one every year)

he used the FLU analogy, I didn't. I think comparing the FLU to malware is stupid. Because it's not a normal virus. It would be similar to a super virus in the pc world, for which we all should download a patch once a year that will protect us for a few months, as the flu vaccine does with influenza.

And when I said it should be used once year, I meant strictly for scanning purposes (which I stated in previous posts). All year long, I make sure to update/patch my computer as frequently as possible. But a few times a year I'll run a virus scan.