a word of WARNING!

My Antivirus has ended today, so I looked online for a better if possible deal. A lot of the performance reports said BitDefender was very good, so I found an advert for their TotalAV price £59.95 which is a bit expensive as I'm on an old age pension but I took the plunge and bought it.

I had to create an account then input my bank details then got told an email would be sent with the download link, then another page came up with the price, they total was not £59.95 but £71.94 because they added VAT.

 

This is not advertised on the front page of the website, I was very annoyed so phoned them up and canceled and got my money back, I told the lady on the phone to my mind this is false advertising, it should say the total price on the front page, but then not many would buy.

 

I wonder how many complained or did they write it off as experience?

If you are in Britain or Europe you should know that VAT is always added from a UK or European vendor unless the price specifies that it is included.

 

DJ

You should just use what comes free already on your computer.

My Antivirus has ended today, so I looked online for a better if possible deal.

 

You can't get better than FREE! I have used Comodo Internet Security (free version) for 10 years without problems, it's pretty keen too: http://download.comodo.com/cis/download/installs/2000/partners/cispremium_installer_6114_38.exe?track=6114#_ga=2.70850064.101377219.1501868176-718167443.1501868176

I use Avast free antivirus with no problems too. They do have upgrade options but I always ignore the ads for them. With Avast you have to re-register once a year and at that point it's easy to get foiled into an upgrade so one has to be careful!

 

Cheers

Stinger

 

Sent from my SM-A300FU using Tapatalk

I had Avast and I paid for it, but every time I went to use it I got a popup saying it was the free version and did I want to upgrade, I tried to contact them but never got a reply.

I carried on using it seeing as I paid but that is why I looked for something else when my year up.

 

I noticed on some they advertise full protection but when you look in to it further they want extra money for the odd addon, if you are not careful you can end up paying a lot.

They do it crafty by saying "For Only £xxx" you can get this or that, sounds good till you add it all up.

 

Having said that I know what a pain it can be if you do get a PC virus, I've been there lol.

Have you ever changed your AV and after it scans it finds something, then you wonder why your old AV didn't pick it up, I often wonder if they do that to make you think it is a better product than the one you had so you keep it or upgrade?

I noticed on some they advertise full protection but when you look in to it further they want extra money for the odd addon, if you are not careful you can end up paying a lot.

They do it crafty by saying "For Only £xxx" you can get this or that, sounds good till you add it all up.

 

I have the free versions of CCleaner and Malwarebytes, they both have features which are available in "Premium only" which I can live without anyway. Comodo doesn't have that, or any Ads either, I would have ditched it years ago if it did!

You should just use what comes free already on your computer.

 

+1.

Especially if you are running Win 10.

If you get Comodo be sure you get the 'Internet Security' and not just the 'Antivirus' package. Then again no matter what AV or IS you have if you then use Internet Explorer (or Edge if Win 10) you not as secure as you might think. Comodo also makes a 'safer' internet browser (with small footprint) called Comodo Ice Dragon. NOW you're talking! Even the free version of Avast will be good enough (and is what I have used for 10 years). Do yourself and your operating system a favor and get the version that matches it (ie: 32 or 64 bit).

Chuck B

Napamule

SMH You should have got Bitdefener Free! It's all you need and use Sandboxie for your browser to minimize polymorphic malware.

Just buy a good AV year subscription. Any is better then this freeware muck. Walk to nearest pc store or your favourite webshop and buy one on disk and you're done. Peace of mind is worth a few bucks! Makes life much easier. Also just one AV to manage, and no chance of two interfering with each other! Easy peasy. All it costs you is two cups of coffee a month. (Or one packet of ciggies.)

il.:cool:

Just buy a good AV year subscription. Any is better then this freeware muck. Walk to nearest pc store or your favourite webshop and buy one on disk and you're done. Peace of mind is worth a few bucks! Makes life much easier. Also just one AV to manage, and no chance of two interfering with each other! Easy peasy. All it costs you is two cups of coffee a month. (Or one packet of ciggies.)

il.:cool:

 

Why do all that when there is a very good AV program already on his computer and it is FREE?

Back a few years ago, I stupidly entered a torrent site and contracted the mother of all viruses. (Going on-line produced alarm bells, sirens, porno, faux blue screens, dire warnings, etc.). Had to call a PC geek to remove it - he had to re-install Win 10 - I had to re-install FSX-SE, and then numerous aircraft with their associated files. Luckily I had backed-up everything flightsim on MyBook.

 

He also installed Viper, a really good anti-virus payware app. Since then I have no virus or malware issues (that were not detected or removed).

 

So those who dare to enter a torrent, abandon all hope...

I've been using Sophos Home, which is free. Used the payware version before. No problems so far & it seems to run in the background without problems & also says it updates every hour!

Have paid version of AVG on our laptops mainly because I had used it for years, but when it needs renewing I shall use Sophos.

Keith

Just research and read comparative reviews, what is "best" varies year by year as software changes. Avast, Avira, AVG, and Panda always rank at or near the top (the freeware versions are fine, paid versions just give more options); Windows built-in AV compares so poorly in detection and removal that it often isn't even included in the final analysis. Norton and McAfee were fine in their day but run their tendrils so deeply into your system that it is somewhat jokingly said the only way to completely remove them is to reinstall windows.

 

Over the past ten years I've used: Avira - excellent detection and removal but a fair amount of false positives (I'd rather research a few of these than have something malicious sneak in), decent customer service, I dropped it when it would no longer tell what it had found, queries for "more information" got the system locked down for a full scan, the only way out was forced shut down and reboot; went to Panda, which is cloud based so has a small footprint on your system, only complaints were occasional popups from my firewall when it wants to contact odd websites having nothing to do with Panda, it dropped from the top rankings this year so I moved on; tried AVG but after ten minutes of non-stop popups from my firewall about it wanting to contact so many different sites and open so many ports during install I cancelled the installation (at one point the popups were appearing faster than I could "allow" them); using Avast the past three months, full scans are fairly quick, scans of individual files/folders are easy, nag popups not to objectionable, customer service non-existent ...and every 2-3 hours throughout the day it virtually brings my system to a halt as it spins both internal drives like lathes, reading from all partitions and using 20%30% of cpu time (once saw it hit 47%) for 4-5 minutes, this isn't even a scan - the icon isn't spinning - so I've no idea what it is doing ...other than wearing out my drives.

 

So I'm considering returning to Panda.

 

But the best anti-malware is pure common sense, admittedly a rare commodity today. Don't open unknown email attachments, don't download from untrusted sources, give all downloads an extra scan before opening, be wary of clicking any popups online ...and backup everything, even ransomware is little more than annoyance if your entire system is cloned to an external drive that is safely stashed away. (I have two 1tB external drives which I alternate once a month for complete backups of both internal 500g drives, another external drive hooked up as necessary for incremental backups.)

shees jgf, that's a lot of different programs you tried in a short time.

All freeware it seems. Based on your description.

If you would have shelled out for the full version of any one of these, you would have saved yourself a lot of headache.

Plus your system would have been 100 times more secure.

On this subject, when I was working at the airport in a control room, there was a guy came in (contractor) who was installing some software on one of their machines.

He seemed a nice guy and also very clever, then during conversation it got on to PC viruses, he laughed and shocked me, because he said, "Oh, I have written a few of them and uploaded them on to different sites hidden in various software."

I lost all respect for him straight away and told him so, I said, "That sort of thing is not funny and as far as I'm concerned you are nothing but low life."

We never spoke to each other after that, we met again a couple of times but when he saw me he put his head down and I just ignored him, the point is you can never tell from appearance that someone can be so malicious.

Just buy a good AV year subscription. Any is better then this freeware muck. Walk to nearest pc store or your favourite webshop and buy one on disk and you're done. Peace of mind is worth a few bucks! Makes life much easier. Also just one AV to manage, and no chance of two interfering with each other! Easy peasy. All it costs you is two cups of coffee a month. (Or one packet of ciggies.)

il.:cool:

 

A fool and his money are soon departed.

shees jgf, that's a lot of different programs you tried in a short time.

 

Four programs over ten years, one of them used for seven years, another never installed. Is that "a lot" in a "short time"?

 

 

All freeware it seems. Based on your description.

If you would have shelled out for the full version of any one of these, you would have saved yourself a lot of headache.

Plus your system would have been 100 times more secure.

 

As far as the actual AV portion goes, the free versions are identical to the payware versions, laying out money gets you smartphone protection, email scanning, website filtering, tech help, etc. (all either irrelevant or superfluous for me).

 

Headache? Install Avira, seven years later remove it and install Panda, three years later remove that, abort an install of AVG, then install Avast. Windows should be so little trouble.

 

In 27 years of PCs and internet I've had malware get past AV three times, once on my first W95 machine (had to reinstall windows) and twice 5-10 years ago, in the latter cases no damage was done because other security, and knowledge of how my computer normally runs, kept them from being more than a minor annoyance til removed. (To Avira's credit, when I contacted them with the symptoms of the most recent, they responded that day that it was a new trojan for which they didn't have signatures yet, then referred me to Kaspersky, from whom I got a small file to run in safe mode; a few minutes later my computer was well again.) I don't see where paying $60+/yr would be any better.

We can't save them all.

 

Cheers,

I installed Comodo and sorry I did, intact very sorry I did, I'm furious I did.

 

I had lots of trouble after re-installing FSX and then re-installing Orbx scenery, after 2 more deleting everything and starting again still having problems I found out Comodo was blocking some of it from working, Geez! I was very mad!!!

 

Then when looking in to it I found Comodo was also blocking Train Simulator from working because it said it was malicious, luckily I never ran my Train sim otherwise I may have been trying to fix it when it wasn't broken.

 

So I uninstalled it, so I thought, it left files scattered all over the PC, after thoughrer search I cleared it all out except for 2 files that won't delete, it says they are being used in another program, the other program is the one I'm trying to delete.

So now I will try safe mode and if that doesn't work then I will have to find a killer program to get rid of this muck.

 

I'm furious!!!

Well, I did say it was pretty keen - you should get pop-ups asking you to block or allow 'unknown' or 'new' programs. When you've done the first full scan with it, you have the option to select programs to add to exceptions and this is permanent, you shouldn't get any further warnings about those programs. Anything it identifies as a virus will be removed to Quarantine, where you can re-select it and add to exceptions individually. It doesn't delete anything permanently without your permission.

I manged to delete those last 2 files by going in safe mode.

Now it gets worse, I just paid for F-Secure and it sent me confirmation emails with a link to their website where I had to register to get the software.

I registered, go on the site, clicked on a few things to download it but no download, nothing happens when I click on it.

I go to their help and guess what, nobody there till tomorrw at 08.00, I sent them an email and got an autmated message which at first I thought was a link to the download but it took me to their website where I had logged on, I went through the process again just in case it had changed but no joy.

I recommended buying on disk at a webshop/regular store exactly because you often seem to have issues with software downloads and support teams.

1 Buy Disk,

2 install with installer on disk,

3 enter included licence code,

(4 make account),

done.

Problem is I'm almost housebound, I am waiting to go in hospital for a hip replacement, I can go out if I drive but just lately I've not been out very much, so this is the reason I bought online.