Whats the best Virus checker thats also good for stopping Dialers

Can someone please advise me on which is the best virus checker, thats excellent for viruses has plentiful updates as soon as a virus is detected.

But is also good for spyware, especially for detecting Dialers (those evil things keep bombarding my system)

I currently have Norton Antivirus Corperate Edition 8.00.9374
Which is supposed to be the best you can get but it doesnt seem to have dialler protection.

Does norton antivius 2004 have it, Does mcaffee.
I think (so dont quote me) but i think Panda Antivirus has something but im not sure how good it is, plus i dont know which version does have it if it does, is it platanum edition, titanium edition or normal edition.

And if so how good is it as a virus checker as ive never really heard of it (so that cant be a good sign) so is it as good a virus checker as norton and mcaffee. and does it have frequent updates.

I really appreciate you help on this matter.
Anthony1uk

 

I don't know which antivirus programs have good dialer detection,but Spybot Search and Destroy has dialer detection.

Regarding update frequency for av programs I know that KAV and Dr.Web update daily.I'm sure that other programs have daily updates also.

I trialed Panda Titanium for a short time and that's just the av.Platinum has a firewall in addition to the av if I remember correctly.How good Panda is at detecting dialers? I don't know.

 

Panda is good at detecting Dialers.Much better then Norton or Mcafee

 

There is no 'best' AV, but for virus detection and speed of updating malware definitions, Kaspersky AntiVirus or any one of its clones would be a good choice.

In this test, McAfee, Kaspersky and AntiVir seem to do well at dialer detection but Panda did not fare as well; http://www.rokop-security.de/main/article.php?sid=693

But AV programs cannot catch every type of malware so it would be better if you chose ADDITIONAL Spyware software to check for dialers. Some suggestions are found here;

http://www.wilders.org/spyware.htm

http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/spywareremoval.shtml

http://www.cfos.de/watch/index_e.html

Hopefully a good firewall and safe-hex would also play a part in your layered defense system

 

McAfee is very good in detecting dialers and such joke stuff. I think it would be the best decision for you. Main problem may be resouces-hungry program and not so common updates. But it stil rox!

And sure, Kaspersky, it is all-round program ... there is no garbage which would escape from KAV. It is the best!

 

About Kloshar's suggestion of McAffee: that's Enterprise, not Home Version...

What I would say is that you should rely on regular scans with anti-spyware apps as defence against dialers. If you want to go the extra mile, you could also use resident spyware scanners, like TeaTime (which comes with Spybot 1.3) or Javacool's SpywareGuard.

 

I use them both, they play well together

Cheers

 

Bitdefender comes with a dialer guard and alerts you when any other number besides your isp is dialed, check it out.

 

AntiVir Personal Edition also has Dialer detection.

 

dear Pigman, both flavours of McAfee are nice regarding dialer detection. Panda, AntiVir, DrWeb, BD all are good except Norton. though the later has provisions against them you'll seldom see them in use.

 

Another test which suggests that out of 8 Antivirus scanners, AntiVir, KAV, and McAfee were the best at dialer detection; http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2004_02xx.php. Again Panda was not too hot!

 

the results of the august comparative will be released in some weeks (currently doing it; about the half is done). the results have still to be corrected, but so far it seems that there are some interesting results. The results of february are now outdated, lets wait for the new results in some weeks

 

I know that McAffee Home also has good detection rates, but it is bloated and piggish, and is probably the only ativirus that uses ActiveX (!). BlitzenZeus refers to it as "HacktiveX" for a reason, you know... I dunno, maybe McAffee home is safe, but I would not feel secure with an AV that made me enable ActiveX or used ActiveX controls.

Edit: Btw, AMRX, how good is AntiVir's detection of games? I tested it once by downloading a bunch of Roguelikes, it didn't find a single one of them...

 

dear IBK, any new entries this month or just the old ones? anyone dropped out? just curious.

dear Pigman, sorry i never checked that. doesn't make much of a sense.

 

still the old ones. no one dropped so far, but if some does not get better, some will not longer reach the requirements.
no new candidates, as they still does not fulfill the conditions. E.g. an AV wanted to be included (i do not tell names), but it did only detect 55% in total (atm 85% is the minimum to be included), so it is not included. believe me when i say that the 13 products are already a selection of very good scanners.

 

IBK

So can we conclude that if an AV scanner is not one of the chosen 13, it has either failed to reach your 100% ITW detection or the required zoo detection sample size?

I can think of one fairly well known AV ( not double-engined ) which I am surprised is not on the list!

Further, can I ask why you still include RAV, as it is now an 'extinct' AV?

 

No, you can not conclude this. It is just a selection. There are many more conditions in order to be tested, not just the detection rates.
I know which scanner you mean, there is just one other well-known/used good single-engine scanner out there that I also miss in my tests. The results would be anyway not that good as you would expect (based on the samples I have). I asked that company if they want to be tested, but they never replied . So, they are still not tested. Maybe they will be tested in February, it does not depend just from me. I will ask again in some months and see what I can do...
RAV does still provide updates and is quite good. An idea was also to test it in order to see if MS will release a scanner that is of the same detection quality as RAV or worser/better.

 

Many thanks for your reply

 

dear Blackcat, i'm not surprised because that product didn't make it. but still i think they are doing a good job when you consider the price of that product.

dear IBK, the reason i asked about any new entries is mks_vir. i never used it but everyone who has are praising it. i wonder what stopped it from reaching your tests.