Virus and Spyware protection, which ones to use?
At one stage or another you’re bound to have your PC infected, be it 1 virus or 100 viruses. There is no silver bullet when it comes to Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware programs, it’s just a simple case of some are better than others. So which ones are the best? Well I can show you a whole lot of Anti-Virus awards lists but what really matters is how well do they perform in real life situations. Below i’m going to list the Anti-Virus/Spyware products that I recommend and have found to be the most succesful at removing viruses, by using these programs I would say about 9 out of 10 PCs have been recoverable without a reload of the operating system.
Anti-Virus
Hands down this section would go to ESET for their product NOD32. Some of you have probably never heard of this product, I know I hadn’t until I started working at my current job 2 years ago, but after using this product day in and day out it has easily become my number 1 recommended product to anyone looking for Anti-Virus protection. The product itself in some Anti-Virus awards has placed higher than other well known products such as Norton, McAfee, Trend, etc.
There has been many situations where a computer has come in with Norton, McAfee, Trend, etc. installed and all up to date but they’re still infected. I know, I know, viruses can sometimes get past Anti-Viruses including NOD32 but these Anti-Viruses in my experience have sometimes only returned with tracking cookies as infections after a full scan where as NOD32 has done it’s job and removed actual infections. Speaking of other Anti-Viruses, a lot of the mainstream products have started including a lot of protection features (which is great) but due to this their products start to take up more system resources than they should, Norton in particular was an offender of this pre 2009 version. I have used Norton 2009 a couple of times and I am impressed by the improvement to the startup times and memory usage but for me it still doesn’t perform (finding viruses) as well as it should.
Now I can keep rambling on about NOD32 but the fact is that it’s the first product I turn to when trying to remove viruses. If you’d like to try NOD32 they do provide 30 day trials on their website. You have 2 choices, you can use their Anti-Virus product which works well on it’s own but for more protection their Smart Security Suite provides you with Firewall, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and Anti-Spam features. For those of you who would still like to stick with your current Anti-Virus but would like to try NOD32 you can always use their free online virus scan tool (requires Internet Explorer and Active X). I’ve found this tool to be quite helpful as it does perform as good as the product itself (except without real time protection of course).
While i’m on the topic of Anti-Virus products you’ve probably at one stage used or are using a free Anti-Virus product. Well let’s just say that they’re better than nothing, if you think they’re going to protect you from infections well you’re far off, while they do protect you to some extent in most cases they’re only 40% to 60% successful. AVG Free is a VERY common Anti-Virus product choice but as previously mentioned it’s only around 60% successful where as some paid products such as NOD32 are 96% successful. If money is a problem then sure go with AVG Free (or similar) it will protect you but if you have the cash to spare, purchasing an Anti-Virus is the way to go. As they say, you get what you pay for.
Anti-Spyware
There’s a very fine line between Viruses and Spyware, you’ll often find that a virus scan is quite simply not enough, you also need to scan with a decent Anti-Spyware tool to make sure you are clean of infections. In this section there isn’t 1 clear winner and since you can technically have more than one Anti-Spyware product installed at once i’m going to list a few of my favorites.
- Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
- SUPERAntiSpyware
- a-squared
- SpyBot
Now personally I wouldn’t install all of those, at home I only have SpyBot installed (and that’s due to it’s immunize feature) but I would recommend installing at least SpyBot and either Malwarebytes Anti-Malware or SUPERAntiSpyware as they’re both great spyware removal tools.
This should give you a rough idea on what protection to use. But don’t forget, the best protection is knowing which sites to visit and not visit. Sometimes this is unavoidable (clicking on a legitimate looking link in Google for example), but if you are going to shady websites on purpose (pirating, etc) you should stop as this will only cost you in the long run (stolen personal details, paying a professional to remove the viruses, etc).
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