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Buying a new pc today and I want to quickly install all the free necessary protection programs as the first thing I do. Don't really care how they work and what is better than this and that, names and links is all. My previous MO has usually just been to get the needed program after I get the virus, usually by a google search. Doubt it has done my laptop any good. That and H2O :p

 

Thanks a lot.

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MSE works, but I've seen it let viruses through more than Avast.

 

Also of note, Spybot Search and Destroy is good to have on hand.

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MSE is pretty decent, although, as Nolan said, it isn't perfect.

 

What's more important really is having a good backup, so you can just re-install and restore if you do get a virus. Remember, on an infected system, you can't even trust your virus protection software.

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Do IE9 has some super careful protection on as standard or something? Nothing happens when I click on the download links.

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Do IE9 has some super careful protection on as standard or something? Nothing happens when I click on the download links.

 

A bar on the bottom of your window should appear. Just hit save (or run).

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There's no bar on the browser, except for the windows bar but I guess that's not the one you're talking about.

 

I can't download Chrome even if I wanted to.

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The bar should be yellowish, and at the top or bottom of the web page.

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Also, don't let Wesley near it.

 

Psch... never had a virus or serious issue that wasn't hardware related.

 

Ima pro with PCs yo.

 

*continues to dribble on keyboard*

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You'd be amazed at the amount of people who've told me that they've never have a virus scanner and have yet to get a virus.

 

Now spot the immediate glaring flaw with that logic.

 

Anyway if you want all around pc protection I'd recommend Comodo Internet Security Suite if you like to know exactly what's being protected/blocked etc.

It comes with Firewall, Virus scanner and a nifty feature called Defence+ which tells you whenever something tries to run enabling you to block it if you want.

 

http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/free-download.html

 

Despite what the website says, the free version offers exactly the same package as the pro just without support. (It just says Firewall but you get the full package)

 

*edit* expect lots of pestering for the initial week, but get over that and your golden.

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If you absolutely must use Chrome you're much better using the open source version "Chromium" which has all the spyware features removed.

 

Do you use a phone? An Internet Service Provider? Any OS except a version of Linux you created yourself? Have any kind of free email account or one provided by a hosting company? Do you have a birth certificate, bank account, passport? Do you use a search engine? Have you signed up to any internet site?

 

Even if Chrome does have "spyware" as you say (which it seems only people advertising Open Source software know about), it's going to make no difference whatsoever.

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Do you use a phone? An Internet Service Provider? Any OS except a version of Linux you created yourself? Have any kind of free email account or one provided by a hosting company? Do you have a birth certificate, bank account, passport? Do you use a search engine? Have you signed up to any internet site?

 

Even if Chrome does have "spyware" as you say (which it seems only people advertising Open Source software know about), it's going to make no difference whatsoever.

 

Phones, internet connections, OSs, and emails can be secured reasonably easily. Although I'm not sure what you mean by having a birth certificate, bank account, or passport, none of those are software, thus cannot be spyware. The information you send to a search engine (or any other website) is voluntary.

 

Now ask yourself this. Why would a large company release a web browser without having any apparent revenue coming from it? As far as few people knowing how this sort of stuff works goes this sort of thing goes, well, most people don't even understand the difference between the internet and the web, so I don't think there's any point in giving them that much credit.

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What I mean is, with all those, some company/government has your details. Your ISP, phone company, etc could, theoretically, know everything you upload and download.

 

Also, you've answered your own question on why Chrome exists: "most people don't even understand the difference between the internet and the web". For a search engine like Google, having people think they are the internet is quite important, and having themselves as the default search provider is also very important. Google even pay Mozilla a load of money to have Google as the default search engine.

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What I mean is, with all those, some company/government has your details. Your ISP, phone company, etc could, theoretically, know everything you upload and download.

 

Also, you've answered your own question on why Chrome exists: "most people don't even understand the difference between the internet and the web". For a search engine like Google, having people think they are the internet is quite important, and having themselves as the default search provider is also very important. Google even pay Mozilla a load of money to have Google as the default search engine.

 

ISPs don't have the infrastructure to effectively monitor and record the information that passes through them, and the information that the government has about individuals (that we actually know about) is largely irrelevant.

 

Certainly what you say about the reason Chrome exists is true, but its naive to think, with absolute certainty that's the only reason for the browser's existence. Especially seeing as Google's entire business model is based around targeted advertising and selling information.

 

When you can use the open source alternative, Chromium, you can be sure that any information you don't specifically submit to google is kept private (as people have spent time going through the source code to make sure that's not the case). As far as Chromium's stability goes, I never had any problems with it when I used to use it (switched to Firefox when 4.0 came out). Development branches of software usually aren't nearly as buggy as people make them out to be.

 

Having said this, I do like google as a company. They've continuously been one of the more innovative of the large tech companies, and I use their products every day. I still don't trust them, however, nor do I trust any company.

Edited by Emasher

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Even if Chrome does have "spyware" as you say (which it seems only people advertising Open Source software know about), it's going to make no difference whatsoever.

 

They log what you enter in the omnibar, like search terms. They don't log every time though.

 

For 98% of these requests, we don't log any data at all and simply return the suggestions. For the remaining 2% of cases (which we select randomly), we do log data, like IP addresses, in order to monitor and improve the service.

 

However, given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours

 

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-suggest.html

 

It also says in that article they started to "anonymize" the results. They log stuff like when you installed Chrome and were you downloaded it from but I don't think that's an issue.

 

Every site logs your IP address anyway, N-Europe has it (and they are tracking us right now).

 

Personally I think it's no different than just going to google.com and doing a search. Your data will be collected from Firefox as well since it used the same search suggestion feature.

 

Chromium is the development build of Chrome so it might not be as stable. You can run Chrome incognito to prevent your searches (possibly) being logged.

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I’m convinced that the best protection for your computer is to be sensible about your online behaviour. Especially for the guys, that means no scrounging for free porn in the darkest corners of the internet. I’m using Microsoft Security Essentials as well, but I don’t have “real-time protection” on. I occasionally do a scan once in a while. In the last 2 years, I’ve only had few virusses / trojans.

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MSE

Spybot

CCleaner

 

Chrome/Firefox with NoScript extension

 

MSE does a good enough job as virus protection. It's detection isn't the best in the industry (though it is up there), but it doesn't hassle the user like most of it's peers and false positives are low (i.e. unlike McAfee/Norton/AVG. MSE doesn't bug you three times a day over things that it mis-defines as viruses).

 

Regular Spybot updates, scans and immunisations will help keep spyware off your PC

 

CCleaner is a spring cleaning tool. Not really needed now, but it's good to use it every few months to clean your computer up.

 

Chrome/Firefox, not because I have anything against IE (the latest version really isn't that bad) but because extensions like NoScript can really reduce the chances of spyware/malware getting on to your computer.

 

Overall though, the answer is to be sensible. Don't download files from dodgy sources (or, if you must, make sure you scan the files with your virus scanner before opening them. With MSE this is as simple as right clicking on the file and selecting 'scan with MSE'). Last time I had a virus on my PC was almost 6 years ago I think.

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  • AVG Free - if you want to pay, McAfee seems good (got a free subscription with my current laptop), and ESET NOD32 is my favourite. I favour unobtrusive antivirus software that doesn't disturb me in my everyday use of the computer. However, the best antivirus program is useless if you don't update the virus signature frequently and schedule some scans.
  • Malwarebytes
  • Spybot S&D
  • Ad-Aware SE - I'm starting to feel that this is a bit useless when I have Malwarebytes and Spybot, however.
  • CCleaner - clean up your registry and other ex-temporary crap on your machine, important for Windows.
  • Firefox: Keyscrambler (not sure if there's one compatible with the latest version of Firefox yet, I haven't bothered checking)

 

Antivirus software I've tried:

 

- Avast: Awful. Comparable to spyware on your machine. I remember fighting with it for ages trying to uninstall, and its notifications are the worst.

- Norton: Extremely slow, slows down your machine. It may be effective, but I used to joke that I'd prefer a virus to Norton installed on my computer :)

- Avira: Seems to get broken/glitchy easily.

- Kaspersky: Seems ok...hard to tell whether or not it was being effective.

Edited by EddieColeslaw

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