Re: OT: free firewall and antivirus?

The message <LCpHi.37232$mZ5.1580@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
from Chris Whelan <cawhelan@xxxxxxxxxxxx> contains these words:

Basni wrote:

Which is the best free firewall and antivirus to use?

I'm using XP Home.

TIA.

There are so many, and so many opinions, it's hard to give a definitive
answer; this is just my personal view therefore.

Cue all the nay-sayers :-)

Assuming you are using Service Pack 2, the built in firewall is all that's
needed for an average user. It only checks incoming traffic as standard,
but that's mostly what you need. If you want/need to monitor outgoing
traffic also, my personal choice is Kerio, available from Sunbelt Software.
Best of all, use a router even if you only have one computer.

Absolutely agree! :-)

Kerio:

http://tinyurl.com/2fc42l

That's a good choice if you _must_insist_ on inflicting resource
sapping personal firewall software (there are _far_more_ cpu efficient
ways of dealing with the 'malware phoning home' threat - read on). I
personally won't tolerate any such resource sapping personal firewall
software on any of my PCs, preferring the much better alternative of a
firewall 'appliance' (the gateway router box) to totally flummox any
remote hacker attacks.

My choice of antivirus is AVG free. No antivirus is perfect, but this one
has served me well for a number of years, and is always there or
thereabouts in reviews.

Totally agree, again! PC Pro magazine did a 'snapshot' review recently
and AVG, whilst not the best performer (at that particular point in
time), beat seven other AV products including a few of the commercial
full price products. Such magazine reviews of AV software are of rather
limited value. If it had been a year end report of how each AV product
had performed on a weekly basis, it would have provided a more useful
assessment.

AVG Free:

http://tinyurl.com/39aeu8

Another recommended freeby is Avast, but it's rather hideous GUI puts
it out of the running for me as far as being a regular alternative (but
a handy 'trustworthy' alternative for those rare occasions when a 'Zero
Day Threat' manages to get the better of AVG, and you need something to
clean it out so you can re-install/update AVG to clean out the other
stuff missed by Avast before then uninstalling Avast :-)

To make your PC as secure as possible, antispyware is also needed. I use
Spybot, but is is necessary to understand it. It needs manual updating, and
has to be run manually, but it does a good job.

Spybot:

http://tinyurl.com/5s3o8

That's the main protection against malware infestation these days. If
you had to choose only one single product over all the others, this
would be the number one choice, especially if you plan to use IE as your
default web browser.

Provided you remember to check for, and download, the updates at least
once a week (and do a scan immediately after such an update) _and_
remember to click the 'Immunize' button after recieving any such
updates, Spybot S&D will block several thousand 'Bad Products'
(malware), effectively closing the floodgate (AKA Internet Explorer :-).

The exact figure on the number of bad products blocked not only depends
on the bad products database update but also on the OS and login account
type. For administrator privileged accounts, the current figures are:
WinXP HE. 33,000 odd, Win2k, 12,034, and Win9x around the 6 to 7
thousand mark.

Much to my surprise, a recently installed winXP Pro SP2(volume licence)
only produced a figure of some 28,000 odd (perhaps winXP Pro SP2 is a
little less (FSVO 'less') vulnerable?)

It's also worth installing Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE personal
(lavasoft.de) as a backup 'adware/spyware' scanner/remover tool to act
as a 'sanity check' on Spybot S&D as much as anything else. It's always
a good idea to have alternative 'anti-spyware' scanners (unlike AV
products where the problem of more than one AV program is due to their
active protection services clashing with each other).

Arguably the most important thing to do is to develop good practices online.
Avoid clicking links in emails from unknown sources, don't use
file-sharing, and avoid dubious websites! It is also important to keep your
Windows installation fully updated.

To avoid most of these hassles, you could always use a second machine, or
dual boot your existing one, and use Linux for the majority of on-line use.
Not everyone has the time or interest to do this of course.

Good and sound advice. The main thing is that you've configured your
windows box to optimise on performance and reliability, not only for the
day to day tasks but also in terms of AV scans and other housekeeping
tasks and accept that there's no such thing as a 'fit 'n' forget'
security solution.

On a microsoft windows box this actually means keeping the boot and
programs partitions seperate from each other as well as from the data
partition (or disk) and (ideally) use the best windows to date from
microsoft, win2kSP4 :-) rather than that festering 'Pile Of ***'
marketed under the name of 'Windows XP'. Vista (or Vasti might be a
better arrangement of the letters involved) is a definite non-starter in
all but a drooling idiot's book.

HTH

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

.