Anti-virus software

[joelj1964]

Hello all; My Name, as you can obviously see, is Joel. I am new to the site and attempting to become a student of Malware University. I have been looking through the site for the last couple days just getting a feel of everything. I wanted to comment on some of what I have seen, as well as, what I have not seen. I am totally confused as to the number of recommendations/suggestions to use AVG and Avira as an anti-virus for those who use free versions for whatever reason they may have. I regularly answer security questions on Yahoo Answers, and I can not tell you the number of people who post questions regarding infections who use AVG. Agreeably, it is the most popular choice for the average home user. However, popularity does not equate to effectiveness. Additionally, most all of the anti-virus reviews I have read complain about the enourmous amount of resources AVG uses, as well as, it's inability to remove whatever it finds. It has a pretty good detection rate and only 8 false positives (according to one review: 3 was the least FPs by 2 others) but has a hard time with removal. What good is an anti-virus program which allows the infection to enter your system, later detects it but can't remove it? As for Avira, there are alot of people who swear by this product. I will agree it has a great detection rate. The problem is, however, the number of false positives. Twenty one according to one review and 18 according to another. With so many false positives how would you ever be able to place any amount of trust in it's results? I personally choose Avast. 98.3% detection rate; 5 false positives; bootscan option, detects rootkits, heuristic scans, built in firewall (should not be used as exclusive firewall) and many more features. I will admit, however, I'm not a big fan of the interface of the newer version, 5.0. I strongly prefer 4.8 which is perfectly fine since the viral data base is the same. No, I'm not in anyway affiliated with Avast. Just trying to provide some useful information to assist in safe surfing. Good luck to all and I look forward to continuing with Malware University!

[careless25]

Hi joel,

Hopefully i will see you soon in the University!
The reason most helpers recommend these AVs is because even though they are not the best they still provide the protection one needs when one is online. The purpose of this site is to keep the people from getting infected and most people dont want to pay for their protection thus we give them a list of free good AVs to use. It all depends on what the users are comfortable with. I agree that some AVs are better than others but some also have features others do not.

And these AVs combined with other security tools(MBAM, Spybot, etc.) provide equal protection in the end.

C25