"Naive question about free Anti-virus " Topic

I'm thinking of switching to the free Avast software (as an additional question, is that still the recommended favourite freebie?).

My naive question is – how do you know you are downloading from the correct site – if, for example you Google Avast to find the site? Seems to me an obvious route for the bad-guys to go would be to set up rogue sites impersonating the genuine ones.

Or am I being silly?

Doug

Go to a reputable computer magazine website (e.g., computeractive.co.uk), see if they have a link to the site somewhere and download via that.

avg.com

AVG is very good.

go to Cnet and find it there, they always have the correct places to Dl something.

download.cnet.com
Is a pretty well respected site to get free software from. I find it quite useful when setting up new computers and such.

Avast is pretty damn good. Example, my free home addition caught found and blocked a virus that ended up being from my work, that our "paid for" up to date, symantic anti-virus not only totally missed, but to this date, doesn't detect. It is almost idiot proof (it's not totally idiot proof, because it seems that people keep breeding bigger and bigger idiots, and it's hard to keep up).

The main avast site; avast.com is where you want to get the software from.

Avast is a power HOG, like Norton: our local 'puter store told me that both take c. 50% of your system's resources to operate "in the background".

The truth is: antivirus won't protect against the NEXT virus, only against the known ones. Another fact: the chances of getting a virus that crashes your machine are as remote as being struck by lightning.

I say this confidently, because my brother, who has been online and building his own 'puters since virtually the beginning of this service to the general public, has NEVER been hit by a virus, and he doesn't run any antivirus on any of his half-dozen home machines (at work, he's seen only a few virus attacks in all these years, and NONE of them were stopped by the antivirus programs being run).

What he does is make very comprehensive backups, both on other hardrives, on other machines and off-site. He set me up (finally) so that each night at just past 9 o'clock my system gets crawled and backed up on my other hardrive, and off-site on his machine, and then he has periferal drives that he backs everything up onto weekly/monthly.

The reason why he does this is because ANY 'puter will get increasingly inefficient as time goes on, what with fragmented files and spyware (which antivirus-spyware let slip by) and all that. After one to two years, the machine needs to be reformatted and everything put back on fresh: that's the only way to assure spiffy speed. Antivirus programs don't solve anything and they use up resources….

Another fact: the chances of getting a virus that crashes your machine are as remote as being struck by lightning.

Depends on where you go.
If you habitually stand in water puddles holding a steel shaft golf club during rain storms, your chances of being struck by lightning are slightly more than remote.

I switched from AVG to Avast last time I reformatted.
I was happy at first, because I thought Avast would be less of a pig than AVG… and maybe it is… but it's still more of a pig than I'd like it to be.
Also, it seems that it's not 'free' after all… it bugs me a few times a day with a pop-up that says it's about to expire and offers me a chance to subscribe.

@Doug Larsen – that's very interesting. I know what you mean about the gradual strangulation of any computer because of all bits and pieces that add themselves on over the years. And I haven't had anti-virus on my PC since the January with no noticeable problems. Admittedly, it has very limited internet use but it does kind of support your point. On the other hand, the lengths you have to go to as suggested by your brother sound quite daunting.

Doug

Unfortunately, I got hit last December with a worm ('gamer porn' website – scanned illustrations of steppe cavalry) that I still have some residual effects from. It left hooks in the system files which were very difficult to trace and eliminate without a drive scrub. I have since gone to AVG which in addition to computational resources eats up drive capacity with its update files and logs (not as bad as windows, but still irksome. As I do a lot of history/gaming research on-line the antivirus seemed to be the logical choice.

Depends on where you go.

That seems true.

My brother's daughter is an animé freak, and I guess those kinds of sites are rife with invasional crap. Her 'puter last year had been rebuilt by her dad, then c. 1.5 months later had to be rebuilt again: she had picked up something that basically shut down Net access altogether. My brother tried to find it, since the rebuild was so recent: he figured it would be easy to spot. After five hours he gave it up and simply reformatted and reinstalled everything: the rebuild took three hours….

I go to filehippo for free software. You can trust them.
They also only display the better stuff.

AVG is the best, yes even better than $60 USD boxed sets. They update often so they do catch alot of newer stuff. I also run malware medic, ccleaner and search and destroy. I get all these legally free. They do a good job and dont hassle me much. Oh, yeah I have double firewalls with the Verizon built in one and I use zonealarm which is another great program.

I did have to upgrade my ram, though. But it only cost me $20. USD newegg.com is good for buying computer stuff at great prices.