Following the recent press publicity of various companies being
hacked, I have done some research on the free anti virus programs available on
the internet for personal use. A number
of articles have highlighted the fact that a large percentage of computer /
mobile phone users are not running any sort of anti virus programs, and, hence
are opening the doors for a potential attack.
As mentioned all the programs that are listed can be downloaded for
free, and, guard against malware, spyware, and, viruses. I cannot immediately provide a differentiation
between these terms as they appear to be used interchangeably, however, they all
have malicious intent in that they want to either disable your computer,
utilise it for other means (e.g. for bitcoin mining, or, mounting attacks on
websites, commonly known as a “Direct Denial of Service” (DDOS) attacks), or,
to obtain personal information (e.g. banking information) through key logging
software in order to commit fraud against you.
I will now deal with the various programs in turn. Clicking on the bold titles will link to the web page of the company concerned, and, provide instructions for downloading the software. It should be noted that this web page also displays contextual advertisements which are provided by Google. Due to the nature of the subject matter on this page, the adverts may also display anti virus / anti malware content which may also be of interest to the reader.
Anti Virus Guard (AVG) – When downloaded this program runs in
the background and updates itself on a daily basis with new virus definitions. You can do a full system scan, which can be
take several hours to complete depending on the size of the data on your hard
drive. There is also a version of this
available for your mobile device.
Malwarebytes Anti Malware – This again is a standalone version,
which updates on a daily basis. A full
scan can also be undertaken regularly, and, for my computer at least tends to
be quicker than the one performed by AVG.
There is also a version of this available for your mobile device.
Malwarebytes Anti Exploit –This is a very interesting program as it
monitors your PC in real time searching for suspicious activity when browsing
the internet. The software focuses on what is known as “zero day”
vulnerabilities, which means it is constantly trying to detect new threats that
are emerging, where as some of the anti virus programs only detect the
established virus programs. This program
should protect you against the so called ransom-ware threats that are browser
based, i.e. buried in your browser content.
The program starts up when you open your internet browser.
MicrosoftSecurity Essentials (MSE) – An anti virus program from the Microsoft
Corporation. Beware that if you do a full system scan using this program
it can take between 9 to 12 hours to complete depending on the number of files
you have installed, so start it early in the morning.
All
the above are free to download for personal use, and, have the option to
upgrade for a fee. Even if you decide
not to upgrade the programs will run in the background, and, will not pester
you to upgrade. Please note you should
only have one of the anti virus programs installed, as, running more than one
at the same time may cause your computer to malfunction as the programs may interfere
with each other. The exception is the
Malwarebytes Anti Exploit, which everyone should have installed and running.
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