Free Antivirus and Security Malware programs

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• d'@ve Posts: 45,526

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  06/06/15 - 17:09 #2

  Interesting report on what to look out for and avoid on install (mostly you can just uncheck their 'essential offers' to avoid them.
  
  But Barclays Bank customers would be mad to ignore their free Kaspersky Internet Security suite.

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• Stig Posts: 12,446

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  06/06/15 - 17:18 #3

  Bitdefender continues to be a good choice.

  BitDefender’s product is currently solid, offering no junk. avast! isn’t perfect and does want you to install additional software, although it is high-quality software. AVG has been full of obnoxious junk on the past but seemed okay when we tried it — we’re not sure what’s going on there, and we’d advise avast! over AVG if you want a free antivirus like these ones.

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• pericom Posts: 6,025

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  06/06/15 - 17:51 #4

  I dont use a realtime protection. It hinders more than it helps.
  Ive had so many false positives its a joke.
  
  Nowadays I use portable virus checkers, Kaspersky gives one for free, Avira has PC cleaner tool. But the best is Herdprotect it uses 48 virus checkers at once. Then I have a util that just sends the MD5 to VirusTotal for checking individual files.

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• barbeler Posts: 23,827

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  06/06/15 - 17:52 #5

  No problems with AVG, although I have uninstalled that Trusteer thing after hearing that it's largely pointless.

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• Stig Posts: 12,446

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  06/06/15 - 18:31 #6

  pericom wrote: »

  I dont use a realtime protection. It hinders more than it helps.
  Ive had so many false positives its a joke.

  
  If you are getting false positives you are either using a really rubbish antivirus or downloading lot of stuff from a dubious source.

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• RobinOfLoxley Posts: 27,040

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  06/06/15 - 22:12 #7

  I think I have had only 4 worrying false positives in the last 6 years
  (which is when I got my new laptop and properly started sussing out how to tinker and what I should be doing for a home network and the now 3 computers on it)

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• d'@ve Posts: 45,526

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  06/06/15 - 22:38 #8

  pericom wrote: »

  I dont use a realtime protection. It hinders more than it helps.
  Ive had so many false positives its a joke.

  Care to explain that? There is no perceptible difference in performance when running the full Kaspersky IS on my PC and the number of false positives is minute... most days I have none. And I am sensitive to such things, I used to tear my hair out at times in the past when using McAfee or Symantec IS (years ago so I have no recent experience of them).

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• pericom Posts: 6,025

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  06/06/15 - 22:55 #9

  Ive been debugging software the past 2 weeks in machine code so Ive been downloading small programs and compiling my own as well.
  
  I virus scan the downloads and a lot of the virus killers flag them as malicious code.
  
  Ive step-by step the code and looked in the CPU registers & stack of other software the virus killers claimed were malicious, they were 100% wrong.
  
  Kapersky was one of the worst for false positives.
  
  You cant hide from a debugger.

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• pericom Posts: 6,025

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  06/06/15 - 22:59 #10

  Stig wrote: »

  If you are getting false positives you are either using a really rubbish antivirus or downloading lot of stuff from a dubious source.

  
  Avira / Kapersky / Dr Webb / Virus Total for virus killers thats as good as it gets. Dubious source NO! Im compiling my own code.

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• Stig Posts: 12,446

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  07/06/15 - 06:30 #11

  pericom wrote: »

  Avira / Kapersky / Dr Webb / Virus Total for virus killers thats as good as it gets. Dubious source NO! Im compiling my own code.

  
  OK, that explains it. Isn't most released code signed these days?

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• pericom Posts: 6,025

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  07/06/15 - 12:55 #12

  Signing code is optional. Besides someone could always patch those things out.

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• [Deleted User] Posts: 2,078

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  07/06/15 - 13:25 #13

  Do the debugging in a VM without the AV installed?

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• d'@ve Posts: 45,526

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  08/06/15 - 01:38 #14

  pericom wrote: »

  Kapersky was one of the worst for false positives.

  
  Well I can't recall the last time I had a false positive from KIS - or a false negative that I am aware of - so as it works well for me I won't be looking elsewhere unless and until that changes. Especially as it's free (for me) !
  
  Your situation is obviously different but is fairly untypical of its main intended user base I'd have thought.

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• gother Posts: 14,705

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  08/06/15 - 12:38 #15

  I find zonealarm free firewall and antivirus to be superb, i do have adaware as a back up too that is run once a week just to double check.

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• soulboy77 Posts: 24,488

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  08/06/15 - 13:31 #16

  Avira is currenlty coming top in the AV-comparatives real-world protection test. Both Avira and Kapersky get very few false positives.

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• RobinOfLoxley Posts: 27,040

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  08/06/15 - 14:32 #17

  Avira did pickup that c:\hp\bin\endprocess.exe was suspect on my Compaq CQ-61 laptop
  
  I reported it as a false positive but it was never accepted so I just marked it as an exclusion
  
  (it's only used when doing a Factory Recovery)

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• Mike_1101 Posts: 8,012

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  08/06/15 - 15:39 #18

  d'@ve wrote: »

  Interesting report on what to look out for and avoid on install (mostly you can just uncheck their 'essential offers' to avoid them.
  
  But Barclays Bank customers would be mad to ignore their free Kaspersky Internet Security suite.

  
  I have been using it for almost 2 years ago, effectively for free as I don't pay any charges. Never had a problem with it, and at £32 a year would pay for it if I left Barclays.

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