I just got hit with a major viral infection, that combofix could not remove, and that later disabled system restore and broke my registry, forcing me to back everything up and DELETE F*CKING EVERYTHING, reformatting using the factory restore ASUS includes on all their netbooks. I've since got most of my important stuff back, and first thing I did was install Spybot and Avast!(I love the sexy computer voice ). Are there any other security programs I should get? Perhaps a standalone firewall to replace the sh*tty windows one? I've had good experiences with the simple and effective Sygate personal firewall, but I'm sure that's dangerously outdated by now.

I've not had any real need for special firewalls and such. And I must confess not being a fan of spybot overly much, I have found that super antispyware to be a better tool for such things, but that is just my opinion.

With Avast though, you should be protected against a great many things :p

tifreak, you may not be a fan of Spybot S&D but thanks to it I have successfully defeated 4 variants of the XP Antivirus trojan on 3 different computers. I've found the tools section in its advanced mode to be a powerful weapon that I've used to manually remove many infections from many computers.

And the document shredder is great for getting rid of [questionable content]...

I've found it to be very effective, especially when combined with Avast! Those two generally complete my security arsenal for now; I haven't yet had a need for a standalone firewall.

Why would you want to get ride of Questionable Content its a great web comic?

Haha, I am pretty sure that's not what he (and my edit) meant.

double

i've had good experiences with malwarebytes, myself, but i guess that may be because i dont put it in [questionable content] situations...

What's Malwarebytes, active anti-spyware software or cleanup software?

the free version is cleanup only, but it's a particularly effective cleanup that has saved mine and other's computers several times.

Fair enough, I'll have to keep that in mind for my anti-malware arsenal the next time I need to deal with an infection on someone's computer.

I'm never understood these anti-spyware anti-virus scanner firewall whatevers. From my experiences, they are all themselves malware. They constantly ask you to buy a renewal and they're IMPOSSIBLE to uninstall. They leave all sorts of bad stuff on your computer including registries and system files. Plus they really slow down the computer and hardly ever work when they do find something.

I've had 2 windows computer for 4 years that I use daily and I've never once got a virus or installed any type of anti-virus software. If you know how to use the internet well, then you shouldn't have a problem. Some of the things I do: Don't use any peer-2-peer or torrents, check where a url leads in the corner before actually clicking on it, don't click on suspicious sites from search results, have a safe browser with popup blocking and ad blocking, spam filters in email, and other practices like this.

It's pretty much impossible to get a virus unintentionally, you'd have to be doing something unsafe in the first place.

Nod32 scans very, very fast. One of the reasons why I bought it (another being Dshiznit recommended (He had it on another computer (I can't think of a Questionable Content joke atm)))

I can pretty much guarantee you're infected. According to Avast.com, 99 out of 100 infected sites are in fact legitimate sites, only 1 in 100 are so-called "shady" sites. You might think you're safe, but you're not.

If I must use anti-malware software then Microsoft Security Essentials seems pretty good and unobtrusive.

Given that most people are behind hardware firewalls these days I don't see much point in a software firewall.

What about AutoRun trojans on people's flash drives? Virii in files people give you or send you unbeknownst to either of you? Tracking cookies and all that fun stuff?

I like linux! Best antivirus ever.



No flames please

Heh, it's true, although it's just security by obscurity.

Same security I use in real life

Then you should really upgrade. Security by obscurity in the real and virtual world, such as dictionary passwords, spare key hidden under your doormat or behind a flower pot, sensitive documents hidden in innocuously-named folders, and important servers protected only by their hostnames or IPs not being published are all examples of things that should be remedied with proper security.