Free Anti-virus/malware suites. New kids on the block.

[Workingman]

I recently updated my netbook/tablet to W10 and wondered if there was an alternative to 360 Total Security, which I have been using for years.

We all probably know about AVG and Avast! (the companies have now joined but their AV suites remain as was) and to a lesser extent Avira, Bitdefender and ZoneAlarm, but my search led me farther afield.....

What I came across surprised me for there are now offerings for home users from the more business related companies Kaspersky and Sophos.

Kaspersky is an installer download with a 365 day licence, which will need free renewal. Sophos requires you to set up an account (I used a throwaway email address) but then the download begins.

I have set up Kaspersky on the netbook and Sophos on my W7 laptop without any issues. I will keep an eye on both of them to see how well they do. Kaspersky is on the netbook because it appears to use fewer resources and its full scan was reasonably quick and unintrusive. The Sophos scan on the laptop took some time, in the background, but then it was checking hundreds of GB of files on two partitions. It did not noticeably interfere with the work I was doing.

I'll give them a few weeks before reporting back on their effectiveness and how much they nag for other things. I know AVG and Avast! can both be a bit 'noisey' when it comes to those 'must not miss' offers.

[Suff]

Hi WM,

Kaspersky has been available for the user for a while. The only reason I don't use it is because of the fiddle factor. You really do need to get a few changes done for smooth running. Something I don't need to do with Norton.

Sophos has bad Karma with me from business days. I don't have a barge pole long enough and my memory is not short enough to think about trying it again.

Let us know how you get on.

Right now I'm trying to get my desktop re-built. Just bought a new motherboard and CPU cooler. Apart from two adapter cards, that's a full house in hardware replacement....

[Workingman]

Suff, I had forgotten about Kaspersky till I went looking. The new version is very quiet on W10, with most of the boxes ticked. It is nothing like the commercial version with its new dashboard more suited to the home user, but it claims to use the same definitions databases as the paid for version.

We have had different experiences with Sophos. I had to use it with one company and got to like it, but if you had mentioned Trend then I too would be in the market for a bargepole.

I have just been offered a not-too-shabby and free Vista machine by one of my volunteer clients who has just upgraded to a hand built W10 machine. I might be tempted to go looking for bits to do a rebuild. He had both made by a local computer guy and the hardware inside is good stuff. I guess that he is one of those who avoids 'generic' like the plague - good man.

I'll see how these AVs go over the holidays and get back in the New Year.

[TheOstrich]

Do we not consider Kaspersky to be a bit "iffy"?

I'm not sure I'd want to invite Russian hackers into my computer, free or not ....

[Workingman]

Do we not consider Kaspersky to be a bit "iffy"?

Not really. The Yanks were all over anything "Russian" following Trump's election and all the stuff about Hilary's emails and 'fake news' stories. The UK was only half-hearted in its support, the rest of the world just got on with things.

And it is not as if American companies are exactly 'clean', are they? Think Facebook and Twitter, Amazon and Google...... billions of us give them an open door without even thinking about it. Some of the Apps on Google's Play Store have been proved to be incredibly leaky, but still we download them.

I have been using Qihoo 360 Total Security since it first came out, despite all the warnings about it being "Chinese" wink, wink. My logs never showed anything suspicious so I gave up and just let it do the job. The only reason I was looking for something else is because it has become quite insistent lately that I would be better off with its paid for version.

[Suff]

For those who watch this sort of thing, it was Kaspersky that discovered the virus which can infect your hard drive firmware. It is, essentially, impossible to remove although it will remove itself if it does not find anything of interest.

That virus was written with total knowledge of the actual hardware inside hard drives and the code of that hardware. It programmes itself into an area which cannot be erased with a firmware update on the drive so, is, essentially untouchable.

Now here comes the fun bit. Not one of the hard drive manufacturers has come out with a removal tool. After all if you can program yourself into it, you could overwrite it with another piece of software from the manufacturer... Surely??

When analysing the code, Kaspersky noted that it was written by the same coders who produced Stuxnet. The signature was very strong in the coding. We know that Stuxnet was a tool used to attack the Iranian Nuclear fuel enhancement factories and was delivered by the CIA in a very successful coup that seriously damaged the centrifuges used for the enhancement.

It is believed that the CIA had it written by Israeli programmers. This is quite possible given the recent "assistance" given to the FBI by an Israeli company who had, quite literally, taken iPhones apart and reverse engineered both the hardware and software to make it possible to attack them and break into them.

Kaspersky, in this one? Good kids on the block.

You have to be careful when believing the whole "everything Russia is bad" slant on the world. Granted they have more than their fair share of gangsters today and their government is not beyond being underhand to "get ahead". But then again neither is the US or the UK... Remember when the UK had to admit they had been listening in on Frau Merkels encrypted mobile phone conversation.

I'd use Kaspersky (as my highly geeky tech son does), but I simply don't have time to configure the whole suite. Also I've had very good success with Norton in keeping my machine clean even though I've pushed the boundaries a few times.

However, when my Son in law managed to get his PC infected with a particularly nasty Trojan, the only way to get it out was to use a Kaspersky boot disk. Norton knew it was there but failed to remove it.

[Kaz]

Mick met Kaspersky at a Bluecoat conference at the Natural History museum where he (Mick I mean) was giving a presentation. He got a mug, a teeshirt and some free software

[AliasAggers]

What's wrong with Windows Defender?

[Suff]

In short Microsoft does not put enough time or money into anti virus. The big companies put millions into it, have computers out on the net specifically designed to be infected with all kinds of malware and to trap it, analyse it and work out how to defend against it.

If you only ever go to the biggest commercial sites, then Defender is probably all you will need. But if you go to other sites, even wordpress which was hacked and became a malware infection point a few years ago, then you need better protection.

If you go to sites which actively try to attack you (as WM and I do), you need something more. There needs to be proactive defence and then there needs to be immediate action. First it needs to stop virtually everything from getting onto your machine in the first place, second it needs to block what has go to your machine before it gets under the Windows system. Defender is OK ish, for all these tasks. But it doesn't need to be just OK nowadays. It needs to excel.

Back at the turn or the century I didn't use AV, I was just fairly careful. But by 2003 I realised I was being daft, virus software was becoming so sophisticated that your machine was becoming infected before you even saw the web page and there was nothing you, as a user, could do about it.

At first it was a big problem as Anti Virus was such a load on the processor. Then came Windows Vista and hardware was forced to advance so fast that Anti Virus became a light load.

In my world it's not worth skimping on protection. Although I don't just buy something and renew it every year at ever spiralling prices. I go to Ebay every year and get the latest £17-£20 deal instead of paying £60-£70, each, for both my subscriptions.

[AliasAggers]

Thanks, Suff.

I don't, on principle, do any on-line banking, and for the few occasions when I need to
make a payment, as for on-line shopping, I use a very low- endowed credit card I have
taken out specially for that purpose, so that any potential loss is limited.