Twitter Ye Not… Robin
It seems that the Twitter phenomina was silenced at least for most of the day yesterday.
I like many others couldn’t twitter, apparently the twitter servers were a victim of a DDOS attack. The hackers saw fit to silence the bird.
It just goes to prove, that no computer system is safe from the hackers, and you must, must, must keep your own virus checkers up to date, and have a decent firewall (not the one that comes with Microsft Vista, it only blocks inbound traffic).
Â
So here is my 10 Sheckels worth on some useful free software to help with your computers security:
There are plenty of decent free programs out there that together can enhance your secuirity and keep you machine safe from prying eyes:-
1. Avast Home Edition Free Antivirus – AVG Free was my usual free virus checker recommendation, but I had a spate of customers getting viruses, and AVG failed to sort it out. I now always recommend Avast Antivirus, the interface on the free version is a little quirky, but it does the job. The main advantage Avast has over AVG is if it detects a virus in memory, it will offer to do a boot time scan. When the machine next boots, it will do a full virus scan early in the boot up sequence of your computer. This gives a virus little chance of loading, and is useful when a virus keeps files in use. Avast has over 80 million users.
2. Comodo Firewall Free Edition – The firewall that comes free with Windows Vista only blocks traffic coming in, not going out. A better solution is Comodo Firewall. Like all good firewall software, there is a period when it has to learn with your help what traffic is allowed, and what is not. This can be annoying at first, but after a few days things settle down. The install program, comes with a firewall & antivrus program. I prefer not to install the antivirus portion of this software.
3. Spybot Search and Destroy – Another great free product, that doesn’t even have a paid for version. The whole software development is funded by donations. Excellent program that gets rid of spyware. Spybot-S&D was awarded with the Forte downloads 5 star award award in the year 2008
4. SuperAntiSpyware Free – Bit of a cross breed this one, gets rid of Spyware, Adware and Removes Malware, Trojans, Dialers, Worms, KeyLoggers, HiJackers, Parasites, Rootkits, Rogue Security Products (phew). Their tag line is “Remove ALL the spyware, not just the easy ones”. So as you can imagine, I use this to get rid of some of the tricker viruses and spyware. The free version doesn’t have a Real-Time Blocking  option, which means you have to do a manual scan each time. Superantispyware has over 12 million users worldwide and detects & removes over 1,000,000 threats.
5. Spamfighter Free – Not really security as such, but going through tons of spam each day can be time consuming, and just plain annoying. This program works for Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird. The program learns as it goes along what is spam & what’s not. It’s used by more than 6 million happy users around the world
UPDATE:
6. Malwarebytes - This has become so good lately I’ve had to include it in my list. One of THE best free programs for removing Spyware and some viruses.
Hopefully this post has helped you, why not post a comment?
Popularity: 56% [?]
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tags: Antivirus Avg, Avast, Avg Free, Better Solution, Boot Time, Boots, Checkers, Comodo Firewall, Computer System, Ddos Attack, Dos Attack, Firewall, Firewall Software, Free Antivirus, Free Recommendation, Free Version, Free Virus Checker, Hackers, Inbound Traffic, Little Chance, Phenomina, Prying Eyes, Servers, Spate, Spybot, Star Award, Twitter, Useful Free Software, Virus, Viruses
I use Avast and Super Antispyware too.
I’d rate Avast higher than Norton as it detected a few trojan horses that Norton didn’t. I always do the “thorough” scan although it takes a long time but it does scan the heck of my harddrive to protect my computer.
Huddson
.-= Huddson Lee´s last blog ..How To Use Google Analyticator =-.
Huddson,
Norton was the daddy a good few versions ago, but became old & bloated. You needed an awesome computer to run it, it slowed most of my customers machines dooowwwwn.
This seems to be have been sorted now, but I still like you rate Avast the best.
I’ve only touched the surface here, perhaps in a future post I can look at some more must have programs.
Any other programs you absolutely swear by?
Keep in touch
Rob
.-= Rob´s last blog ..Email Goof-Up, or Don’t Diss Your Customers =-.
Thanks for the advice ….finding free anti virus always seems to be a minefield.
I will sign up for one of the above.
Hope alls going well on the course,
richard
.-= Richard Darby´s last blog ..Traffic or List Building =-.
Hi Richard
The only program in my list that can be truly classed as a virus program is Avast. If you are looking for a virus program that’s the one you definately need. The others are excellent but are programs that you would run if you think you may have a problem.
Keep in touch
Rob
Hey Robin
Some great recommendations there…thanks!
I do begrudge spending money with the big boys when there is so much out there for free
I will bear these in mind!
A great post!
Talk soon,
Paul
.-= Paul Wilson´s last blog ..What more video? =-.
Yedda: RE: How to remove adware.win32, i cant download any ……
robinclapworthy answered: re:how to remove adware.win32, i cant download any thing from the internet to fix the problem …
Hi Trevor
Thank’s for dropping by. Pleasure helping you, I’m sure you can return the favour when I need it.
Cheers mate
Rob
Are there any new companies developing antivirus firewall solutions? The old ones are not that good
Hey, this is my first visit to your blog… We are a group of volunteers and starting a new initiative in a community in the same niche. Your blog provided us valuable information to work on. good job
Thanks for this cool post. Anyway i found your blog on google and find it very useful. I’ll be sure to come back again for more!
If all government agencies were required to purchase only software which was more resistant to hacking, vendors would make this a priority. The rest of us could then buy it from the same sources. I’ve been in this security business for a long time. If one were to believe that it is realistically possible to block all net traffic from China, then they don’t understand how easy it would be for hackers there (or anywhere) to spoof network addresses and appear to be somewhere else in the world.
[...] did an important post on this blog a few months ago about the importance of having a decent virus checker, spyware [...]
I really liked reading this post. I will be coming back to browse more fascinating views. With thanks.
Hello! How are you today? It’s only that i enjoy your site so much, and that i think you can start earning a bunch of cash from it. I have a few winning blogs that I started bringing in some cash from lately. They use a thing called a content hider widget, that makes guests fill out a small quiz to unblock premium content or to download files that they need. And each time they do a quick quiz i earn about a dollar. Pretty cool eh? Been making lots more from it than google adsense!! Feel free to contact me, or you can check it out through my link. http://www.tinyurl.com/yevwfst, Kind Regards, Hennrik F. Hannsen
I lately came across your blog and have been learning along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very frequently.
This post is awesome I am gonna put this in the bookmarks before I lose the address I don’t think I’ll ever make it back here otherwise!
It appears that you’ve put a solid amount of effort into your article and I need to see a lot more of these on the Internet these days. I sincerely got a bang out of your post. I do not have a bunch to to say in reply, I only wanted to register to say terrific work.
Viruses slows down your computer and is very annoying. Get rid of them using spyware blockers by downloading free software to remove it.
I have found that people like to get onto facebook / youtube / myspace when they are at work. So the simple way to do that if it is blocked is just to unblock it with a facebook / youtube / myspace proxy. You can always find new ones if yours gets blocked.
Thanks for sharing this excellent post, i truly adore your weblog, but i’ve some problem i dont know whether it is my side issue or in your website? some words of the post in your blog have charactor encoding problem, yes i use auto detecting, can u pls look into this issue a bit?
greetings there, i just discovered your site on google, and i would like to say that you express pretty good on your website. i am truly struck by the method that you write, and the message is outstanding. anyway, i would also love to know whether you would love to exchange links with my website? i will be more than happy to reciprocate and insert your link on in the link exchange area. waiting for your respond, thanks and enjoy your day!
I wanted to say that it’s nice to know that someone else also mentioned this as I had trouble finding the same info elsewhere. This was the first place that told me the answer. Thanks.
Very helpful article.Thank for this.
great post, very valuable and good stuff
Many thanks for writing this wonderful blogposting. I truly like the fashion which you use to create about points. It had been very informative and I wish to many thanks you for thaking the time to compose about it. Plenty of individuals would clarify this stuff so more complicated, but together with your statements I genuinely understand now anything. I am sure I’ll verify back again your website and my rss reader will like your stuff as well. Visit my site: Computer Security Articles.
I truly love all the hard work that you’ve put into keeping this site here for all of us. I honestly hope this is online for a nice long time.
Excellent Info. Tweeted about it. I?l bookmark this post too.