What is the best anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-hacking program (free or not free) out there?

They are all very very similar, all of the big guys (Trend, Symantec, Macafee) collaborate on their virus definitions to lower development costs and to speed up the reaction time to outbreaks.

The main differentiation points in the anti-virual systems is the deployment ease, and styles of administration – especially important for large deployments. I would loath being in charge of IT and having to run around to check and make sure that everyones definitions are up to date.

I guess what I am trying to say is that you can’t go wrong with one of the big guys, as long as you keep it up to date. If you are looking to deploy on a large number of computers – thats where your decision making process gets more complicated. If I were in a position to have to buy something for my personal computer I would simply find one that was on special and get it on the cheap.

Cheers!
Mike

Eset NOD32 it consistently gets rated better than anything free out there (including the ever so raved AVG). There is no scheduled maintenance, it finds more scanning not only for signatures of viruses, but characteristics as well. It uses about 10% of the resources that Norton or Mcaffee uses. It’s very non-intrusive when it comes to blocking applications you want to run. It’s only 27 dollars a year annually, and about 50 dollars when you initially buy it.

If I had a dollar for every time a computer came into my place of work with a virus that was running a free virus scanner I’d be a rich man.

Do yourself a favor, spend a bit of money when it comes to your personal security, or protecting yourself against identity theft.

Compdo Internet security suit – free: firewall, antivirus, safe browsing.

comodo internet security suite

i use avast. it’s free, it updates daily and i’ve never had a virus. it warns u if ur about to get one and asks what you would like to do with it (quarentine, delete, rec. bin, etc). it’s amazing and it’s 100% free. I’ve had my comp for 5 years and never had one prob. hopefully that speaks for itself.

I use BitDefender, but you may find this chart useful.

Avast or AVG cannot be beat for free. If you want even better, you can pay $30 a year (I think) and get NOD32. They are all amazing and very cheap, if not free.

Personally I feel that any free Anti-Virus is free for a reason. If the free products were the greatest out there then there would be no market for products such as Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky’s, ect. They are usually free for a variety of different reasons. AVG isn’t all that bad, however the scans are a bit slower than I would like. And for those people who claim Oh I never got a virus with avast! or AVG then that is great…I know people that don’t use anything and can claim the same. But ofcoarse safe browsing habits can be just as preventative than having half-way decent security. I have encountered countless machines that have some kind of free anti-virus that have loads of issues caused by viruses or spyware. The bottom line is that if you have free software, you have to be more careful than if you had quality software that costs money. On a side note, I used Norton (not a big fan of because of resource management), McAfee (not a big fan because of poor performance) and others. My favorite so far has been NOD32 which many people have not heard of. The GUI isn’t the prettiest thing out there, but it proves itself as a very reliable software.

I would definitely recommend AVG Free. It’s worked like a charm and I’ve never had any trouble with it.

@Random x 2 (who knew there were 2 of you?!) Thank you for your thoughts on the freeware. I was considering dropping my “paid for” subscription service….but I won’t now….

AVG ftw!

Zone Alarm is what I use and I love it. It comes with an antivirus/spyware as well as a firewall….awesome. Norton is the worst thing that someone could put on their computer. Used to use it and had to format my machine many times. If you have it on your machine go and download Zone Alarm and uninstall Norton then go to Norton’s website and download and run the separate uninstaller to get the rest of the Norton crap off of your machine.