Internet Security - a new kid on the block

[Workingman]

I have gone back to W7 having fallen out with W8.1. It's a long story, but Win updates kept undoing MY settings and re-installing ITS settings. Now that's not on in my world, so W8.1 has gone - Goodbye and good riddance.

Anyway, about this new kid.......... because I was getting shut of W8 I thought that I would try a few things out, some quite dangerous things, just to see how things went. I was going to do a fresh install so was not bothered about malware or viruses, so risk didn't even factor. What I did was to download some free firewalls and free AV suites, and off I went.

Yes, I got hit, as expected, and I cleaned things up as best I could, and I went on a few blogs to see what others were doing when this was mentioned, so I thought I would pass it on.

I downloaded two apps from the site: the 360 Total Security and the 360 Browser, and was mighty impressed with both. The browser is a Chrome clone with a few extensions built in such as a pop-up and ad blocker, a download manager and two rendering engines which work automatically on different types of web pages. It is blindingly fast.

Then came the security suite. It does not have a firewall, more later, so is not quite "total", but what it does offer is real-time scanning/protection, manual scan, tune-up, junk file finder/remover, sandbox and registry cleaner. When doing a full scan it used about 8% CPU and 45MB of memory - not bad at all, and when it was not scanning but in active mode it didn't register any CPU and only 32MB memory. A full deep scan of a near 800GB disc took 18 minutes.

Now, to be totally protected a firewall is needed. I have been using the Windows Firewall but it is a bit difficult to set up, but if anyone wants to use it Windows Firewall Control will help - it's free. However, there are other firewalls out there and this, Private Firewall is one I found to work the best "out of the box" free one. It used to be a paid product. It is light on resources at 0.4% CPU and 11MB.

I ran Private firewall and 360 Security on W8.1 and W7 for over a week without any problems. I am not saying that anyone should barge in and change things for no reason, but if you feel the need for a change or get sick of having to update/register constantly then 360 and Private Firewall might be worth a bookmark.

One other thing I found is this. Something to sit alongside Malwarebytes.

[Suff]

Thanks for the update. I'd seen 360 as I was looking for iPad and smartphone stuff. But didn't go any further. It gets OK reviews. I can understand the whole W8.1 thing. It annoyed me having to go to a second screen before I could bypass the link to a MS account. But other than that I haven't had many issues with it.

I use Norton 360 mainly for the real time heuristic scanning for files, browser and network. Yes it's a bit heavy on memory, but then my laptop is a 32GB quad core i7 and my desktop is a 16GB six core AMD PhenomII. So resources don't tend to be a big issue.

From time to time I do a cold boot Kaspersky rescue disk, just to ensure that Norton is doing it's job. Malwarebytes, adaware, all the other stuff? Whenever I run them they find nothing and never have done since Norton 360 became my security tool of choice. My only issue with it is price. I run two subscriptions because of the number of machines I have to protect. So I buy from Ebay at around £17 instead of Norton for £65.

If I had the time I can see the lure of the free software. I just don't have the time of the focus.

[debih]

I really shouldn't be let loose on a computer - most of that has gone completely over my head!!!!

[Suff]

Just a couple of geeks talking to each other. It was really only intended for those who have an interest and can keep up. Not that we're trying to be exclusive but there are others for whom it might be useful.

[JoM]

It was really only intended for those who have an interest and can keep up.

That's told you Deb!

[Suff]

Nononononon Nooooo.

That was an explanation, not a put down. Sadly WM and I are in a cleft stick. We can talk in terms which we both understand and explain concepts in normal industry terms, letting everyone else follow or not as they will. Or we can dumb it down to the level that we have to spend 10 pages explaining what we mean. Everyone else is either still lost and bewildered or bored to death.

Catch 22. But, I would put someone down for not knowing something they have no interest in! It's been done to me far too often as there are many areas of life I have no interest in whatsoever. Yet others live their entire lives there and can't believe, for one second, that someone else would not be interested.

If I seem offhand at times it's usually because of lack of time...

[Workingman]

I knew Suff wasn't trying to put anyone down, it was just the way he said it.

My OP was for anyone who might be interested in something different to AVG, Avast! Zone Alarm, etc., and who might not be aware that there are perfectly good alternatives out there. I hoped to have put it in a way normal people could understand, but with a little bit of geekiness thrown in.

I have just downloaded the 360 Security app for Smartphones. It says that it can do all sorts of wonderful things, so I am going to give it a try. It is a bundle of ten apps rolled into one and has anti-theft and privacy as well as cleaning and tune-up. When I have given it a decent bit of useage and played around with it I'll be back to let you all know. I know that all the things it does are available from the app store, but why pay when there is freeware to do the job?

[Aggers]

I downloaded AVG some time ago, and it seemed to upset nearly everything,
so I tried, unsuccessfully, to disabled it. Norton 360 tried to get rid of it, too.
It's still there but doesn't give me any trouble now.

[Workingman]

Aggers, you might not want these unless AVG starts to cause problems.

A complete unistall tool from AVG: http://www.avg.com/us-en/utilities

How to use the tool: http://www.mytechguide.org/7871/how-to- ... antivirus/ Scroll down to the Manual Uninstall section.

[Suff]

Aggers, if you run Norton 360, you can't run any other Anti Virus software. They clash...