Does anyone know of any sites that offer free scanning for viruses and adware and other things along that line. I have looked on the net but none of them are really free
Free adware/pc scan
- Thread starter Locomotive
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Download Spybot, AdAware, Spywareblaster, CWShredder, HijackThis!, PestPatrol and AVG Antivirus and you should be relatively safe. You just can't be too careful on the internet anymore.
AVG Antivirus? When we subjected antivirus software to real world testing last year AVG came in dead last. It caught about 60% of the viruses that we tested it against (never even saw 40% of the viruses we used).
AdAware performs very poorly too. There are a number of spywares that it can't handle (Gator and Xupiter for example). AdAware performs marginally better when the machine is put into safe mode, but still didn't do as well as many other products.
The Microsoft product is still a beta product-it's never a good idea to put a beta product on a production PC. Beta is just that-not a finished product and is being tested to find the bugs.
It's extremely irresponsible to have a PC and not have antivirus software on it. Locomotive, you clearly think that there may be a problem with your PC since you feel the need to test it. I recommend you download and install at least a trial version of Kaspersky, Panda, Norton or McAfee. Never install 2 antivirus products at once, so if you don't like one make sure you uninstall it completely. Decide which you prefer and purchase it so you get the updates.
As far as spyware goes, Spysweeper and Pest Patrol performed best in our test environment. Spywareblaster did well too. Find one or two that work for you and purchase them so you get the updates.
Remember-"free" antivirus software and "free" anti-spyware software are generally worth what you pay for them. Stick with high quality products that you know are stable and work well and you'll have far fewer problems with your PC.
Will the Spyware programs slow your computer? Yes. Will the Antispyware programs slow your computer? Not the well written ones.quote:
Originally posted by LT4 Vette:
Will these Spyware programs slow my computer down ??Will it hog up my memory & system resources ?? THANKS
michaelc80,
Thanks for correcting me.
I meant to say ....."Will Antispyware programs slow my computer down?
Thanks for correcting me.
I agree that much of the computing public has been conditioned to expect free software, and that Enterprise class products can be cost prohibitive for the average consumer (nor would the average consumer want the administrative overhead involved). Which is why my recommendations are products such as Kaspersky, Panda, Norton or McAfee. None of these are Enterprise class products-they are geared for the average computer user. When we did our testing back in 2004, these 4 products stood above the rest in several areas, including ease of use, reliability and a decent interface. Kaspersky is my personal favorite because of the low resource use. However any of the products give excellent results. I believe that if more users would use a high quality antivirus product, as well as patch and update their systems as needed, most viruses/trojans would be a thing of the past, which is why I would never recommend a product such as AVG.
As far as anti-spyware products, I still stand behind my recommendations for Spysweeper, Pest Patrol and Spywareblaster. I've worked on far too many systems that have AdAware or Spybot on them and still have spyware issues.
Michael,
Using/affording a good software is only one thing, IMHO; getting the right message across (learning/information exchange) is another thing.
Too many a time, folks just got brainwashed by some "folks" that sez lots of idiotic things....I got calls from Grandma/grandpa from Florida, working mom from NYC/Bronx area and they didn't know squat when it comes to computers,yet they were lured by the conveniences of having a PC and protection (kinda like having sex w/o protection) and alas! They scream and shout when they got hit by virus and adwares.
Why? either they are too reluctant to educate themselves as to what the real "internet" world looks like nowadays or they are just too "naive" to accept the fact that internet is no longer an "innocent" place to hang out (email inclusive)
This message is not meant to critisize anyone, just trying to state the facts/observations based on years of working in this field.
Cheerios
ironically, Brits know that internet is unsafe and yet according to another survey done a few months ago: 1 out of every 6 email users would still interacts with those spam emails and purchase their services? Foolish? yes! Dumb? Dunno.
I guess it's just part of human nature.
Using/affording a good software is only one thing, IMHO; getting the right message across (learning/information exchange) is another thing.
Too many a time, folks just got brainwashed by some "folks" that sez lots of idiotic things....I got calls from Grandma/grandpa from Florida, working mom from NYC/Bronx area and they didn't know squat when it comes to computers,yet they were lured by the conveniences of having a PC and protection (kinda like having sex w/o protection) and alas! They scream and shout when they got hit by virus and adwares.
Why? either they are too reluctant to educate themselves as to what the real "internet" world looks like nowadays or they are just too "naive" to accept the fact that internet is no longer an "innocent" place to hang out (email inclusive)
This message is not meant to critisize anyone, just trying to state the facts/observations based on years of working in this field.
Cheerios
ironically, Brits know that internet is unsafe and yet according to another survey done a few months ago: 1 out of every 6 email users would still interacts with those spam emails and purchase their services? Foolish? yes! Dumb? Dunno.
I guess it's just part of human nature.
Will these Spyware programs slow my computer down ??
Will it hog up my memory & system resources ?? THANKS
Yes LT4Vette,
Granted that you are experiencing unreasonable "slowness" to your fairly fast computer (e.g. Pentium 4 2.8GHz), spyware/adware/malware and/or virus is of suspect.
Michael,
General public prefers to lean heavily towards "freebie" stuff and thus the free virus scanners and such. Corporate/enterprise class tools are sometime costly to acquire.
In North America most folks use high-speed/broadband + fairly fast computers with little to no protection. Hackers/virus writers would love to have a piece of this performance/broad-band pie and use it (spam mails, spreading viruses, DDoS attacks, Zombies, etc.)
According to an AOL survey done last year: about 70% of broadband PC users have no proper AV software subscription and over half of them AV are not up to date.
Granted that you are experiencing unreasonable "slowness" to your fairly fast computer (e.g. Pentium 4 2.8GHz), spyware/adware/malware and/or virus is of suspect.
Michael,
General public prefers to lean heavily towards "freebie" stuff and thus the free virus scanners and such. Corporate/enterprise class tools are sometime costly to acquire.
In North America most folks use high-speed/broadband + fairly fast computers with little to no protection. Hackers/virus writers would love to have a piece of this performance/broad-band pie and use it (spam mails, spreading viruses, DDoS attacks, Zombies, etc.)
According to an AOL survey done last year: about 70% of broadband PC users have no proper AV software subscription and over half of them AV are not up to date.
I guess you are not using many antispyware stuff.
That Microsoft Antispyware is actually Giant Antispyware - one of the best software with anti Microsoft stuffs stripped!
adaware and spybot are 2 free programs that you download, the run periodically to check your system for "spyware". It does not run continously like a virus protection or firewall.quote:
Originally posted by LT4 Vette:
michaelc80,
Thanks for correcting me.I meant to say ....."Will Antispyware programs slow my computer down?
About once every 2 weeks. I'll clean my cache, my cookies, then run those 2 programs.
If you ever get infected with spyware (gator.com and comet cursor.com are 2 that I've had on my daughters computer.) They take a lot of time to remove, and I don't even know if you can get it all????? Last time she had it, it crashed her hard drive (It could have been going bad anyway) so we started fresh with a clean harddrive.)
Heck I'm think about once a year, formatting the hard drive just to keep it clean. Every program out there writes stuff to your drive in the HKEY registry. Check it out sometime!!
Like others have said Ad-Aware, Spybot, and Pest Patrol. Run Spybot with the Tea-timer option. I find that no single spyware product can do it alone. Even with Pest Patrol, spybot still catches some stuff (not much but...).
Free isn't the best option. Purchase a yearly subscription to McAfee for $30 and a copy of Pest Patrol for another $35 or so.
Moving away from Internet Explorer is your smartest thing to do. You'll find exponentially less junk on your machine by doing that alone. Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla are your best bets.
Free isn't the best option. Purchase a yearly subscription to McAfee for $30 and a copy of Pest Patrol for another $35 or so.
Moving away from Internet Explorer is your smartest thing to do. You'll find exponentially less junk on your machine by doing that alone. Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla are your best bets.
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