ChatterBank0 min ago
Internet security advice
Can anybody help a novice computer user?
I've been reading some of the advice on this great site but I'm still not sure what to do. I had Mcafee already installed when I bought the computer but the 'free trial' has run out.
Do you recommend buying something new or downloading something free? A lot of people have mentioned AVG, Bazooka, Spybot and Zone alarm to name a few.
Which will give me a relatively trouble free/maintainance free/worry free life?
Or is this asking too much?!
Any advice greatly appreciated
SH
Answers
No best answer has yet been selected by snakehips. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Never looked at any free firewalls as I have a purchased one - Black Ice.
There are plenty of good free Anti-virus and Anti-spyware products. For Anti-virus AVG Free Edition is good as is Grisoft Avast.
For Spyware there is CCleaner, Microsoft Antispyware, Adaware, Spybot. I use all of these with no problems. Seems to keep my PC clean. Most important thing is to keep them up to date and use them regularly.
I use zonealarm for my firewall, and panda titanium for my antivirus. the latter can be found here:
http://www.scan.co.uk
and its something like �4 (not inc. p&p), and comes with a year's free subscription. I find it to be a lot better than norton: doesnt slow my system down as much, really does work in the background, and has more regular updates.
true, they are more secure than wintel boxes. for one they are generally more secure as they tend to have fewer bugs than windows does (but not as few as some may think). secondly, and rather majorly, more virii creators etc. target wintel boxes as this is what the majority of people use. targeting macs would be less effective due to the smaller numbers using them, and they want to be as effective as possible.
if you own a mac, you'd be a fool to be on the internet with no antivirus or firewall.
Dear Mattk
Thanks for the advice. I downloaded AVG then Sygate Firewall ok but have had access problems eg. can't access hotmail, can't delete yahoo emails to name but a few. Could this be the virus scan or the firewall?
What can I do to 'get back to normal'? I've checked out the Forum sites but I they are far too technical for me.
Can you or anybody help?
Snakehips