BleepingComputer.com: The Best Anti-virus And Anti-malware?

Hello everyone

I have a question and every reply would be appreciated. I know it can be each to there own,but in your opinion,what is the Top 3 anti-malware/spyware products (and only top 3) and single anti-virus available,freeware or paid for? (If you have a list for paid for products and for freeware,then you can list both if you wish)
Im just interested (and maybe you are too) in seeing what you all say,especially those with quite a few programmes running,in finding out your top 3!

Thanks

Hello vicmax,
My top three anti-spyware products (that I use):
-> Ad-Aware SE Personal
-> Spybot- Search & Destroy
-> a²

My favourite anti-virus software (once again that I use):
-> AVG Free Edition

I'm sure other's opinions will be different, but these are mine. For more information about free anti-virus and anti-malware products, please go to the following link:
Virus And Malware Resouces

Charles

Vicmax,

I'll be a sellout and say:

Commercial Anti-Spyware Products

Spy Sweeper
Spyware Doctor (I use)
Counter Spy

Freeware Anti-Spyware Products

Ewido
AdAware
SpyBot S&D

Anti Virus

AVG << Effective and Free, however I use Symantec AV Corporate Edition LOL

These 2006 reviews might help you out as well...

The following link is for a 2006 review by TopTenReviews of some of the most popular and effective commercial Anti-Malware products:

Commercial Anti-Spyware Reviews

The following link will take you to a 2006 review, by TopTenReviews, for commercial Anti Virus Products. This will help you get a good idea of what AV products you should be looking to purchase. Remember, there are also great freeware products that will serve you well!

Commercial Anti-Virus Reviews

Here is a link to some freeware replacements to commercial anti-malware products:

Freeware Replacements...

I hope this helps everyone out

I must agree entirely with Harry83 on his top three commercial anti-spyware products:

Paid Anti-Spyware:

1. SpySweeper (My personal favorite)
2. Spyware Doctor (Slightly weaker than SpySweeper in my opinion)
3. Sunbelt's CounterSpy (Some people also like CA's PestPatrol)

Paid Anti-Virus:

1. Kapsersky (My personal favorite, a must have if you're going to pay for AV it's ~$50 per year)
2. NOD32 (Excellent product slightly less powerful than Kaspersky but has a proportional price as well ~$30)
3. Panda AV (or McAfee)

Free Anti-Spyware:

1. Ewido Anti-Malware (or A-Squared)
2. Ad-Aware SE
3. Spybot S&D

Free AV:

1. AVG Free (Personal Favorite)
2. AntiVir (This product within the caliber of AVG if not more comprehensive)
3. Bit Defender 8

Just a note though....TopTenReviews is a review site and we all know how those can be...take it with a "grain of salt" because there is definitely a questionable product or two in those lists...towards the bottom of the rankings though thankfully...

The word "best" opens up a can of worms, but I will tell you what I have used with very great success:

AVGFree
Spybot S&D
Ad-AwareSE
Sygate Personal Firewall
Firefox browser

Depending on whether you follow best practices or not when it comes to computer security and web browsing, these may be more than enough.

Regards,
John

I have to say BitDefender is the best antivirus (at least for me anyway). I would like to say a few words about it. I’ve been using this software since version 7 (or maybe since version 6, I’m not very sure) and I’m perfectly happy with it. It works fine both on my desktop pc (Celeron D 2,97 GHz, 1 GB RAM) and on my Toshiba laptop (1,6 GHz, 1 GB RAM). At some point I had ZoneAlarm installed as a personal firewall but then I realized the firewall in BitDefender 9 is good enough and I stopped using ZoneAlarm (I don’t like having a lot of applications running in background and eating up resources and I don’t like a bunch of icons in my tray bar). The user interface is easy to use and clean. Updates are released hourly I think (which in my opinion is one of the most important features in an antivirus solution) and you can set it to auto-update. I’m not using the anti-spam feature so I can’t give you any details on it. I strongly suggest everyone looking for an antivirus solution to download the trial version and test it out.

My 2 cents...

Joe

My favourites, all freebies, are

ANTIVIRUS Avast
FIREWALL Kerio
ANTISPY SpybotSD with Teatimer enabled
SpywareBlaster
SpywareGuard. Have other layers of protection running as well.

My favorite is a security suite. It has a firewall, antivirus, antimalware, intrusion prevention, parental control, Instant Messaging monitoring, and more. It is the world reknowned

Zone Labs Security Suite.

It's only $56.65 for download and plus you get a free 12-month download option.

--Bots

This post has been edited by Botschwitz: 13 June 2006 - 12:56 PM

I totally agree with John there, just that I dont use Spybot and Adaware (I have a router which so far kept me out of trouble). I also use the MVP winhelp2002 Hostfile, which blocks a lot of sites with evil attachments anyway.I use Hostsecure to update it and Hoster to manipulate it (allowing for some google ads).

rgds

Johannes

Thanks to everyone for giving there answers to this one.

So here another,is there anyone out there who has been running free software that has been clean of malware and virus's for over 2 years?

I find it amazing just how good some of the free stuff out there is (a bit like Bleeping Computer in a way ) Is there a way to see how good these freeware versions are compared to there shopside friends?

I guess somtimes, you can get somthing for nothing!

Anyone tried 'superantispyware'? They seem to be pushing it a lot at the moment.

And my preferrred apps, Kaspersky AV & SpySweeper & the freebie Ewido.

The vendors always show a table listing the extra features on the paid versions, you could start there.

This post has been edited by highlander: 14 June 2006 - 05:02 PM

hi highlander,

yes i ve used it and had contact with the author of it. It is a very easy to use programme and the author is very quick in responding to questions about his software in the newsgroups, as well as tries to provide a lot of help. The programme is updated regularly and doe clean a lot of the infections present out there. As I have no VM installed currently I am not sure how it performs overall when multiple infections are present, but sofar I can only tell good things bout it.

hth and regards

Johannes

For all the BitDefneder fans out there, check this out: www.downloads32.com/discounts.php
Kaspersky fans should take a look too.

@vicmax: I personally dont think in free software, at least not in the field of "malware". Take Spybot - S&D for instance: donation buttons all over, can you call it free software? What about support? Plus I don't like it period. But this is just my opinion.

And this is from webroot's website: "In February 2005, the company accepted its first outside investment of $108 million" (http://www.webroot.com/company/). Who can really compete with that? Freeware developers must put some food on the table too after all.

my 2 cents...

Actually, you'd be surprised (or I would assume you'd be) at how many of the helpers/experts here at the forum run on free software. A large chunk of the HJT Team, Moderators, and even some Admins here run on free antivirus programs. The two most popular (and powerful in my opinion) are AVG Free (By far the most popular among the HJT Team and such helpers) and Avira's AntiVir (I'm pretty sure I saw an admin who has this program listed as his AV in his profile). It is entirely possible to keep a fully clean machine without paying a cent for security software. Take for example myself. I use the following:

AVG Free Edition
The Multi_AV Tool
Sunbelt Kerio Free Firewall
Ewido Anti-Malware
Spybot S&D
Ad-Aware SE
Windows Defender
A-Squared
Spyware Blaster
Spyware Guard
and the HOSTs blocking software.

Every single program on that list is completely free and in conjunction with each other, keep my computer 100% clean. Now, this depends on your Internet habits. Being the teen that I am, my habits are probably average (if you consider online gaming bad, then my habits are bad), so most people should survive if they utilize the free tools out there and use common sense on the web. In regards to SuperAntiSpyware: I have tried it. Did I like it? No. There are several reasons for this:
1. Its scanner tooks years to scan my relatively small computer size; not to mention all of my other AS programs managed to scan my computer quickly and effectively.
2. Whenever I tried to end SuperAntiSpyware during a scan, my computer would semi-freeze. I'd have to use the taskmanager to end it. After SuperAS was stopped forcefully, my computer would stay in a sluggish, nightmaric state and I'd have to reboot.
3. The monitoring features consumed a lot of my system resources (and I have quite a lot) and slowed my computer to a point where it was more benificial not ot use the program.

All in all, if SuperAS can be made lighter and faster, it would gain potential to compete against Ewido, Ad-Aware SE, and such programs.