OT - Free Antivirus and Malware Solutions

Submitted by Griff88 on

With the recent malware script. I thought I would share some free options that work to protect your computer.

Free Antivirus for XP, Vista, and Windows 7 32bit and 64bit - Avast, Avira, AVG, and Microsoft Security Essentials

Avast Free - http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download

I use Avast free. It detected and stopped the malware script from executing. It's free for a year, as long as you register it. After the year, just register it again.You don't have to provide your real contact information if you don't want to. You can fill out just about anything, and it will register just fine.

Avira Free - http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

Avira is another popular antivirus. It has a nag screen that comes up to buy it, but nothing major.

AVG Free - http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage  

AVG would be my 3rd choice for protection behind Avast or Avira.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free download and highly rated.  http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

There is also a free online scanner from Trend Micro, a very reputable antivirus and Internet security company.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/?cm_re=Threatbox-_-Consumer-_-HouseCall71

You can run 1 of these scanners together with the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware   http://www.malwarebytes.org/

If you use torrents or other peer to peer programs, then get PeerBlock. Peerblock can't completely protect you, however... it will add a level of protection while your file sharing.

FAQ explaining what Peerblock is and does http://www.peerblock.com/docs/faq#what_is_peerblock

Download page http://www.peerblock.com/releases
 

Even if you just use the free online scanner at Trend Micro, it will help go a long way to keeping you virus free.

*Edit* - I forgot about Spybot, good program. Good call Josh. http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Poster Nutbag

January 25th, 2011 at 9:12 AM ^

Great stuff!  I  love AVG.  I have used Avast and it's pretty nice too along with Trend Micro's.  I've never used Avira.  I have AVG on all my home computers along with Malware Bytes.  The other thing I also use is Spybot.  It's been around forever but seems to catch some things that Malware Bytes does not.  My company uses Malware Bytes too.  

thisisme08

January 25th, 2011 at 9:24 AM ^

+1 for MS Security Essentials, -1 for AVG..absolutely despise that program made my PC run like a dog.

and PeerBlock is a lifesaver/money saver (after a couple Copywright infringment notices later...), the only thing with PeerBlock is that when its running it will also block IP's when your doing your normal browsing and it does not like sites such as CNN or ESPN so you have to manually tell it to allow those sites. 

switch26

January 25th, 2011 at 9:31 AM ^

Avast and AVG are terrible.. specially the free ones.

 

AVG conflicts with a lot of things regarding ur connection at times and can be a resource hog.  One of the last versions of AVG had a bunch of errors, and was causing people's computers to crash etc.. so be careful what you download

 

Avast isn't much better, guess it depends on the user though and what you use your computer for.

 

Id suggest malware bytes or Kapersky if you use anything at all.

thisisme08

January 25th, 2011 at 10:50 AM ^

Concur with your statement.  I have had a computer since I was 8 (MSFT Win 3.1 FTW!) and I have had exactly 1 virus and that was the FXSasser worm. 

Its not that hard to protect yourself and careful browsing techniques are 90% of that.  My parents are mortified of getting a virus despite the fact they live in the boonies and still have dial up.

Don Keypunch

January 25th, 2011 at 9:42 AM ^

for the info. I'll have to add the Avast to my PC since I've been without virus protection for over a year now, and no doubt the browsing on bangbus.com has infected my computer.

Griff88

January 25th, 2011 at 9:50 AM ^

are excellent. Unfortunately, they don't offer a free version. However, if you were going to pay for an antivirus, then either one would be the way to go.

madtadder

January 25th, 2011 at 9:53 AM ^

Microsoft Security Essentials is available for XP, Vista or Win7 and is highly recommended. I would also add to the list Sandboxie. You can run your web browser "sandboxed" and any changes made to your system during your web session get caught in the sandbox and thrown away when you close the browser.

icactus

January 25th, 2011 at 9:56 AM ^

The absolute safest way to protect your computer is sandboxie. It basically partitions part of your hard drive in isolation and acts like a transparency sheet so you run all your torrent or browser files on this transparency sheet and then if there is ever a massive virus you just clear everything on the transparency sheet and your computer is perfectly safe underneath.

Its perfect for running those .exe you find but worry if someone has written viruses into the code.

Hard to explain so just Google it: sandboxie

icactus

January 25th, 2011 at 10:01 AM ^

You do know that this Mgoblog problem is not something on your end, right Its probably just that Brian hasn't renewed a security certificate as opposed to the hypothetical info they list when you click "why is this blocked". But in anycase it shouldnt be a problem for you just becuase you saw that screen.

JBDaddy

January 25th, 2011 at 10:15 AM ^

The error message suggested it was an XSS issue (Cross-Site-Scripting attack).

Some comment or title posted to the site contained a web-browser instruction to load a script from the (whatever).co.cc site that would try to do nasty things to any browser/computer that opened it.

If anything, it was just a clever bit of attack vector that the existing MGoCode to prohibit such attempts didn't catch and stop.

The clean-up steps are pretty straight-forward: Find and remove the script instruction.  Close the loophole that allowed it to get posted in the first place. [Edit: Those are the web cleanup steps, fyi.  Naturally, once your own computer has been molested by the script, a good antivirus, Mal-ware bytes cleanup, etc. is called for on your end]

A security cert (SSL) wouldn't have stopped that.

icactus

January 25th, 2011 at 11:42 AM ^

oops you're right.  I just tried the page on IE and got the prompt for downloading the file.  If people don't have a super paranoid firewall set-up they likely will have something on their computer then.  So run those scans!!

dennisblundon

January 25th, 2011 at 10:18 AM ^

I am running an upgraded version of Webroot and have yet to receive a single warning. Also ran many scans over the past two days and they only picked up some ad cookies. Now my desk top alerts me to an attempted malware every time the page loads. Hopefully Webroot is blocking this with out me knowing.

switch26

January 25th, 2011 at 10:31 AM ^

another thing that people should pay attention to on PC's when getting a virus or spyware w/e is this.

 

If you get a virus that pops up everytime you start your computer, you can  usually disable it by going to your run menu, or search bar on win 7 and typing in msconfig

 

Then once that pops up go to the startup tab, look for any .exe programs that look goofy, or are named like a virus.  Usually turning that off will keep the virus from starting when you reboot, and that way you can run your anti-virus stuff.

 

Or do it all through safe mode as well

Desmonlon Edwoodson

January 25th, 2011 at 11:32 AM ^

As much as Brian has tried to undermine the Hoke hire, it may be UM engineers.  Maybe a warning shot across the bow as it were.  Hell, they took down the US Board of Elections(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130372662&sc=emaf) .  They could probably throw together a nice virus package in 5 minutes at Pierpont Commons...

htownwolverine

January 25th, 2011 at 10:54 AM ^

is the best.

I also have CC Cleaner for deleting startup nasties and Hiren's boot disk which is the blue screen of death life saver, http://www.hiren.info/ .

A couple of tips for the non-techies:

Never click yes/ok on a popup.

Immediately unplug network cable or turn off machine.

Restart in safe mode and run malwarebytes and CC Cleaner.

The above has kept me safe with no anti-virus to bog down the machine and I like porn.

Mgobowl

January 25th, 2011 at 2:24 PM ^

Another thing to think about that the IT guy for my grad progam suggested was to have two accounts set up on your computer. One as an admin with full privileges, the second as your everyday account with limited privileges (ie. no install and limited adjustments to settings). This prevents malware, viruses, etc from downloading and installing on your computer.

 

It's kind of a pain switching between accounts when installing a new program, but for most people we don't install new things all that often and I have not a problem with malware/viruses. Once a month or so I log into the admin account and download any updates that may be available for windows, java, flash, etc.

 

Another suggestion for those running firefox is to install the Adblock Plus and Noscript plug-ins. When you navigate to a website (MGoBlog included) you are actually loading several websites at the same time. All the ads are coming from different sources, blocking those prevents unwanted content and attacks. You can customize the settings so sites like MGoBlog can still display everything and Brian still receives his pennies for each click.

Sac Fly

January 25th, 2011 at 2:35 PM ^

... I had a pretty sweet setup. I used malwarebytes, ccleaner, peerblock and comodo firewall. Also ran wireshark at all times, never had any problems. After they phased out XP I switched to linux and I never went back.

ellatlex

December 7th, 2011 at 6:34 AM ^

Most of us know that there are so many antivirus are available in the market such as Avira,Kaspersky,Avast,Macfee Norton etc. But I am very much confused what antivirus should I use? What things should be countable to choose a best anti virus? Have any link to give me a good suggestion?

MobiusDickius

December 17th, 2020 at 8:09 PM ^

I agree that sometimes even free solutions are enough to protect your system. But I think it's important to find out more about them before starting using any. So it's better to read more about the best antivirus software here. Hopefully, the article will help you with it.