McAfee Security

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Happy Girl

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My McAfee Security Centre telling me my free trial has expired and my computer is not fully protected. Should I purchase software or is there anything I can download free of charge (cheap skate I know!!!!) which would do the same trick.
 
jpd said:
Try AVG for an anti-virus (www.grisoft.com) and Zone Alarm for a firewall from www.zonealarm.com
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Thanks. Will these two combined give me the same protection as i have with McAfee. Are they both compatible i.e. will downloading both cause any probs for me on my pc. Also am I right in saying that I read previously that having more than one security software running can cause probs.
 
A firewall and anti-virus software do very different jobs. So having both running at the same time won't have any compatibility issues.

AVG is replacing McAfee on your computer. When you've downloaded AVG you should disable/remove McAfee from your computer. Having multiple AV software (or firewall software) can cause serious issues. Some AV/Firewall combinations do have issues, but only where the jobs they try and do overlap which isn't an issue with AVG/ZA to the best of my knowledge.

Running a firewall will protect your system far better than simple AV software on its own. If you haven't run a firewall up until now, your system will be far better protected than it was before.

(currently using AVG AV and a Kerio Firewall without any security issues for as long as I care to remember)
 
Satanta said:
AVG is replacing McAfee on your computer. When you've downloaded AVG you should disable/remove McAfee from your computer.
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Have heard that it can be difficult to ensure that McAfeee is removed completely. How do I go about doing that.
 
Hey ,
In order to remove McAffee form your machine you'll need a file cleaner ,you can get them from download.com etc. Without this McAffee will leave ghost files all over your system that will popping up. To be honest I'd stay with McAffee ,I have it on all my machines (3 desktops ,2 laptops) . The AVG and firwall will not give you the same level of security as McAffee . The new version of McAffee has alot of cool new features that arent available anywhere else like "Xray" which makes your pc invisable to hackers on the web and constantly scans you network connections for intrusions. And site advisor which scans the web pages and google search results for hackers and worms etc and lets you know if the site is safe to visit (this version is alot better than the site advisor you get with Windows Vista..if you have vista) .
Hope this helps.

Cheers.
 
The AVG and firwall will not give you the same level of security as McAffee
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Why not?

"Cool" features in security products increase the load on the computer slowing it down - possibly to the extent of annoying the user so much that they switch off the protection - for little or no improvement in security.

If more features and functionality are important to you, then other more feature rich AVG products are available to purchase (www.avg.ie).

[I am an AVG reseller]
 
I've posted this link before but it's pertinent again here:

[broken link removed]
 
In my experience most for most people AVG/ZoneAlarm/Spybot etc all freeware are all the security you need. Especially if you are behind a Router which probably has a hardware firewall in it already. And a small bit of common sense when using the web. I find all these big suites and fancy features are resource intensive and intrusive. We use McAfee where I work, on a few thousand machines and yet if I scan my machine with some of the freeware products I find stuff on machines. Run McAfee on a machine with the freeware installed and it doesn't find anything extra. Yes some of the payware products are technically better than the freeware products, but do most people need that extra ability?

McAfee Xray is an anti Root Kit tool. Theres lots of alternatives to that. Even AVG do a free one.
 
ClubMan said:
I think more than a small bit of common sense in this context can be useful - e.g. using a sandbox utility etc.

[broken link removed]
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While theres a lot of excellent info in those links. The reality is that I'll never get most of my IT challanged users to do 80% of whats in that article. I limit their user access, (no admin rights) make firefox the default browser, turn off most prompts etc. They still download rubbish and stuff they shouldn't but I rarely get a support call from them and a scan on their machine only finds minor malware. Whereas previously there were a lot more problems. I don't think I've seen a Virus infection on a machine in 4 or 5 years, excluding machines that were completely exposed to the net. In the last 10yrs I could count the Viruses I've seen on one hand. When I started in IT PC and Mac viruses may have been fewer but infections were far more common.
 
Have you seen this article concerning Zone Alarm?


Now, the handsomely-named Mr Cringely has revealed that a colleague of his at Infoworld noticed that Zone Alarm 6.0 was sneakily sending off data to four different servers. Cringely says that Zone Labs (acquired by Checkpoint in March of 2004) at first denied the activity for a couple of months before deciding the software had a "bug" even though, as he points out, "the instructions to contact the servers were set out in the program’s XML code."
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Thanks Podd. Downloading as we speak!

Correction just finished and is telling me not compatible with Vista. Any other suggestions for internet security. Freebies of course!!!!
 
I have my AVG anti virus software downloaded and operating fine. As stated Zonealarm firewall incompatible with vista. Do I really need a firewall?
 
Hi Happy Girl, you could use the firewall in Vista - microsoft say it is a big improvement on the one in XP! No doubt the experts will give many reasons not to use it! - I am not an expert in these matters.

Also, if you are accessing the web through a router, the router may have a built-in firewall that would provide better protection than any firewall on your computer. I will, of course be shot down in flames for this ignorant opinion aswell!
 
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