What Free AV do the experts use?

What FREE Anti-Virus do they experts use, and the guys "in the know" and who are security educated? Which AVl do they prefer?

 

Probably the most popular solutions for many years have been Antivir, Avast! or AVG. Don't know how it is with AVG or Antivir, but atleast to use avast! you don't need to be an expert. Should work well without much tuning.

 

Dunno about experts here but this dumb fool uses Avira and worse, a Chinese made new one called Rising.......working good so far but then what does a novice like myself know about security anyways......

There are lots who prefer to run naked and use LUA and SRP with some sort of anti executable and DEP. Then there are those who avoid all that and use Linux.

 

Whats the diff between avast and antivir?

 

Hello truthseeker.

Are you asking of users to self-proclaim as experts, or you want to see replies from "yellow" names only?

I'm certainly not an expert, but for the free AV I use Clam.

 

I'm not an expert and I sure can use some education myself.

DriveSentry 3.1 is also a free candidate for virus protection.

 

AVG describes their product as having 70 million users.

Avast! has 50 million users.

Not too sure of Avira's free edition. Anyone know? Rising's free AV would be doing well too.

General users generally, don't know where to download a 'Free AV' and would ask others. The above products seem to have a 'high user rate' (in the many millions) as more advanced users, or 'experts' are recommending the programs to general users.

I think any of the above would be used and recommended by experts as all perform well and can be tweaked and customised.

 

I just downloaded the free antivir. I will see how that goes. Hope it works with COMODO.

 

Im not an av expert ,in the know ,or seriously security educated ,so for that reason i prefer avast
ellison

 

After cleaning a machine I usually install AVG free. I use it because it is very easy to install and configure, and it runs well on old hardware. Actually, running Avast Home on my personal rig, and have Avira free set up on Vista running in a VM. Avast has to be registered, a slight PITA for repair jobs. Avira has no spyware definitions, but its OK on Vista if you leave Defender running. With AVG don't install the link scanner if you want a happy life.

All three are good and it is not possible to say one is better than the other for all purposes.

 

Maybe av-experts don't really use free AVs?

 

And its a very good one, quite full fledged, even the free one.

 

To protect themselves? Not likely. They work with them for our benefit though, for which they are compensated.

 

Nothing wrong with several of the free AVs out there

But most of them have a strict "for personal use" license, so you have to buy the commercial version to use in your office.

 

Actually, this is a somewhat nonsensical question in that:

• Each and every free AV option on the market will be noted if the thread goes long enough
• There are no constraints built around product or performance traits to assist in providing an informed and discriminating answer
• Given the lack of guiding constraints, opinions are offered in a complete vacuum

Given the above, precisely what are you attempting to learn that a simple search does not immediately provide?

Blue

PS - same comment applies to firewalls

 

Or paid .... or any Real Time Blacklister

Regards,

MaB

 

i would hazard a guess, that the experts.....

use either a paid popular AV or no av at all.

 

I am not an av expert but I am pretty knowledgable concerning them.And at this time I am running Rising AV and FW. So far they seem to be working pretty well. I guess only time will tell how well they actually protect but I believe they will do well.

bigc

 

Running Rising FW + AV (with HIPS) together with DefenseWall on XP box, the old Athlon 3900 is as responsive as my son's dual core overclocked electronical heater (called gaming PC).

 

of course it is,didnt i just say that ?
ellison

 

I'd call myself intermediate, not expert but not exactly a newbie either. I'm probably closer to newbie.

I'm currently running Rising AV and trialing Defensewall on an XP Pro box. No software firewall since I'm on 2 hardware firewalls, router and modem and figure that's enough.

I hadn't used an antivirus for over a year, preferring Faronics AE and Deepfreeze plus Sandboxie. My computer was clean when I ran Rising. No malware of any kind was detected. Ultimately, I'll probably end up back with DF, AE and Sandboxie.

 

At this point-in-time since it's been well beyond over a year or better that i been without them at all thanks to all our other amazing choices, i can at least state the ones i have had preference for.

Paid= NOD32 & Free=AVAST!

So there you have yet another different opinion and hope you find something to you & your machine's favor because other excellent ones have already been mentioned.

As for as experts go, or specialists per say, i highly doubt any use a free AV with the exception of testing their product's compatibility to them.

EASTER

 

I use AVG because it is easy to configure and you can set it to scan daily or weekly, both the free and pro versions.
I do not like AVast free because you have to do a manual scan only. Yes I know you can write a script to do it automatically but 99% of regular users have no idea on how to do this.

I am surprised that Avast Free doesn't offer automatic scanning.

Robin

 

I have never used scheduled scanning, especially not a full scan (which can take ages with all the hard drives I got )

Instead I rely on the on-access (realtime) scanner. So does most others I guess...

 

I instead now installed avast. So you think this is better than AVG and Antivir?

Is there any website that tests all these programs and sees which one detects the most virus?