Good Virus Protection

I've heard it said you shouldn't run two antivirus apps, as they'll confuse each other. Anybody know if that's actually true?

It's twoo, it's twoo! Especially if you're running an over-rated, over-blown memory hog such as Norton Anti-Virus or Mcafee. Trying to run two at once will slow your system, especially web browsing, down to an infuriating crawl...if not shut it down altogether.

For AVG...at setup, I just tell it not to load or run all that needless extra crap they want to foist upon you...and not a sign of bloat.

And the only truly shitty anti-virus software I've ever come across has been F-Secure. It's bundled with Optus broadband in Australia and older computers take a massive performance hit when it's installed.

On the other hand, when Sony put copy-protection software on music CDs that would install itself without permission on any Windows PC that played the disc, F-secure were almost the only anti-virus company that acted in their users' interests, rather than Sony's.

Quoting Bruce Schneier's security blog:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_rootk.html

What do you think of your antivirus company, the one that didn't notice Sony's rootkit as it infected half a million computers? ... This is exactly the kind of thing we're paying those companies to detect -- especially because the rootkit was phoning home.

But much worse than not detecting it before Russinovich's discovery was the deafening silence that followed. When a new piece of malware is found, security companies fall over themselves to clean our computers and inoculate our networks. Not in this case.

McAfee didn't add detection code until Nov. 9, and as of Nov. 15 it doesn't remove the rootkit, only the cloaking device. ...

Symantec's response to the rootkit has, to put it kindly, evolved. ...

The only thing that makes this rootkit legitimate is that a multinational corporation put it on your computer, not a criminal organization.

You might expect Microsoft to be the first company to condemn this rootkit. After all, XCP corrupts Windows' internals in a pretty nasty way. ...

Perhaps the only security company that deserves praise is F-Secure, the first and the loudest critic of Sony's actions. And Sysinternals, of course, which hosts Russinovich's blog and brought this to light.

Yet another reason to not pay money for CDs.  However, kudos to F-Secure for being able to make a stand.

My experience with F-Secure is limited to one computer, mah poor uncle's wee thing, an aged PC with a Pentium CPU of some considerable vintage.  Under the F-Secure regime (or at least, under one of the antivirus program updates, potentially since fixed) IE would take literally minutes from "click" to action.  It was actually fairly difficult to uninstall F-Secure too.  But once it was gone and Avira was installed, his machine breezed through normal operations like normal.

I recently had a vary nasty nasty too.  Impossible to update any AV software or connect to lots of sites.  It had changed the IP settings on the router.

Solution:  Malwarebytes, plus Combofix (use the latter carefully!).

PS, Hello everyone.

I recently had a vary nasty nasty too.  Impossible to update any AV software or connect to lots of sites.  It had changed the IP settings on the router.

Solution:  Malwarebytes, plus Combofix (use the latter carefully!).

PS, Hello everyone.

Yeah, my co-worker had this virus. He said as long as he stays away from the Japanese defecation porn, his system is ok.

You should give that a try Paul.

P.S. Welcome to the Saloon.

I'm not very technical.  Is it only the Japanese variety that's the problem?  Is the Russian stuff safe?

what is the world coming to when you cant even watch some japanese scat porn without having to scan your computer

I'm using Webroot now and I've never felt safer.

I have 30 computers in the office running Avast and couldn't be happier!

I have Avast on my computer too (again).  However, I did have Avast on it when I got the big bad one that killed my computer. 

Look...Br'er 'Noles is a wonderfully sweet and incredibly bright guy, but he tends to live on Pop-Tarts for weeks at a time and it kinda gets to his mind.
AVG got me through many years of extremely dodgy Chinese computing environments, plus God only knows how many gigs of torrents since then, and I've never had a hint of trouble.

Not sure if it handles the Sony thing. Do they even sell CDs anymore?

Oh...I don't do scat porn either...that's just not how I roll, baby.

And oh, yeah, for you new guys...¡Cuidado El Stil! ("Beware of the Stil!")

I was also using Avast when I got the nasty Japanese scat virus DNS changer. Now I'm running Avast, SAS (SuperAntiSpyware), Malwarebytes, Windows Defender.....

Now (I hope and pray) my laptop is OK.  I got some software that allows me to make my fake XP legit too, so that should help as I can now download Windows Update security stuff.

AVG automatically downloaded a toolbar and that refused to let me connect to giggle.ca only .hk.  I immediately deleted AVG forever.  I want the toolbar I want not something specifically Chinese that won't let me use the search engine of my choice.

When I first installed AVG I refused to let it install the tool bar.  It did an automatic update and added the toolbar which I couldn't remove. 

That's weird. Did you download it from their own site?  I never got any crap like that.

Yes, it was from the AVG site.  It was fine for the first couple of weeks, then it did an automatic download to new version. I wasn't asked if I wanted the update. When the computer re-opened, the tool bar had been installed.