OT: Recommended Anti-virus For Windows

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Sorry to mention the “opposition” here, but I have a family member’s laptop to protect, and I’m not allowed to upgrade it to Linux. What’s the current best recommendation?
Thanks, MArtin
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13 thoughts on - OT: Recommended Anti-virus For Windows

  • For privately owned machine I would recommend

    free.avg.com

    – one free installation per household is permitted by license. I only am testing (and would rather welcome comments): immunet 3 (based on clamav which I use for long time on Unix mail servers), I have it installed on a few machine that unlikely ever will see any visus, hence I do not have sufficient “battle ground” experience with immunet 3.

    Valeri

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    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • J Martin Rushton wrote:

    I think I’ve seen Avast mentioned by some trustworthy friends on a techie mailing list I’m on.

    mark

  • One thing I forgot to mention: I also always recommend AGAINST using kasperski. Kasperski is KGB guy (*cough* *cough* retired. You know in that service retirement is only feet first dead, so you do your math).

    Valeri

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • I dislike KGB, NSA, CIA, and all other similar services and dirty trick divisions alike. Whichever country they work for. Always did. Never considered myself any sort of “fighter” against them. But I do advise my users to stay away from the ones I personally am certain about
    (kasperski antivirus in this case). And I do assume everyone who listens to my advise uses one’s own brain to either take an advise or not. And come to ones own conclusion about either kasperski (in this case) or about me, – as you, Alexandr, did. Either is fine by me.

    Sorry, Alexandr, it didn’t mean to sound personal. And I know Russians often take anything said about anything else Russia related personally. But I do feel obliged to warn people whenever appropriate. Even taking chance stepping on other people toes (good people as well which I’m sure you are) if the last may be to sensitive about the subject.

    My apology I’m answering somebody’s else message, yours somehow didn’t show up in my e-mail, but I’m sure there is no harm in that.

    Valeri

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • Isn’t it the FSB these days ? Anyone ever in an intelligence service never ever completely retires. They do tasks when asked and voluntarily pass information to their organisation.

    Intelligence services do things most people would never ever imagine –
    its their job. So Kasperski is definitely suspect software despite UK
    bank Barclays giving it freely to their Windoze customers.

    With Putin rearming and expanding military forces for about the last 10
    years, authorising probing flights by military aircraft, incursions by submarines, invasion of Ukraine, shooting-down the civilian flight above Ukraine, vetoing UN intervention in Syria because of the Russian naval base in Syria …….

    Don’t forget Putin was the ‘resident’ Russian spy in Germany and a senior officer in the Russian spies, who has many links to the Russian mafia especially to the Russian mafia in Cyprus and more recently in southern Spain.

    Perhaps those in the west have better access to information ?

    To avoid upsetting CentOS bosses please send any responses off-list.

    Thank you.


    Regards,

    Paul. England, EU. Je suis Charlie.

  • We (Harte & Lyne Limited) formerly used F-Prot out of Iceland for the remaining MS based desktops. We are presently switching to ClamAV for Windows (http://www.clamav.net/download.html).

    Norton is better than nothing; but nowhere near adequate. The rest of the AV field I have no basis for evaluating.

    MicroSoft’s SE has sort of dropped out of the AV race. See:

    http://www.howtogeek.com/173291/goodbye-microsoft-security-essentials-microsoft-now-recommends-you-use-a-third-party-antivirus

  • I for one would never trust MS as far as AV software is concerned: after they first declared their system is not safe to run without 3rd party software (antivirus).

    All that said about AV options, I can’t hold myself from mentioning:

    The whole antivirus idea is fundamentally flawed. It is based on the attempt to “enumerate bad”. You can not enumerate bad. You can enumerate good, and prohibit everything else.

    Valeri

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • Hi Александр (Aleksandr, Alexander),

    Agreed. The West is far from perfect and has a terrible history of supporting corrupt and brutal regimes as well as subverting some democratically elected governments that were not pro-USA.

    Any intelligent service would love to get internal access to as many computers as possible. Kasperski (from the largest country in the world)
    is a potential weakness. So too are the USA anti-virus Windoze packages which ignore penetrations by Uncle Sam (special ‘virus’ signatures accepted). Conversely non-Windoze machines running Linux, BSDs etc. are inherently more safe.

    It is good that many people from different countries, different religions, different customs and different daylight hours can peacefully unite in their collective use and enjoyment of CentOS.

    Pourquoi ?

    Did those people, the attackers and their victims, really need to die ?
    We have only 1 life.

    Best regards,

    Paul.

  • I have used Avast, AVG, Avira, and Comodo.

    Currently Comodo (firewall and antivirus) is on all of my systems.

  • Apologies to all. That should have gone privately off-list.


    Regards,

    Paul. England, EU. Je suis Charlie.