virgin virus protection

[manofdevon]

My Bullguard virus software program is coming to an end.

Is the Virgin free virus protection anygood?

Does it make the PC (XP/3) run slowly?

[BomberAF]

IMO I think it is is very poor, very un user freindly, and everytime I used it, it always caused my firefox browser to break and not work.

I now use Microsoft Security Essentials which is free if you have a real copy of MS Windows, and you have either Vista or Windows 7. I also use PC Tools free firewall, combined these are just as good if not better than anything you would pay for, so save yourself some money and get MS Security Essentials on your PC

[Acidphire21]

is it still Kaspersky? if it is its resource eatingly low, great protection but its not always the easiest thing to use if you have little or no computer knowledge otherwise its pretty simple to use if you know what programs and processes should be running

[Peter_]

PCguard has changed the all new Virgin Media Security is now fully Windows 7 compatible and features the very latest anti-virus and anti-spyware engines and is now based on Bitdefender.

[BomberAF]

I was using windows Vista and thought it was rubbish.

You seriously just want to use MS Essentials, you dont know it's there, uses no resources and has been given top marks when reviewed, it is very user freindly.

Dont forget an Anti Virus is only as good as it's ability to detect malware, and MS Essentials scored top marks when reviewed in PC Answers, so just go with that and PC Tools firewall, you wont regret it.

[roughbeast]

I use VM's PCGuard because it is free and comprehensive. However I switch off the firewall and use Windows firewall instead.

I have had a few problems though. PCGuard cannot block or clean some trojans. So, as backup I keep a copy of Spyhunter on my system ready to run just in case. This will clean virtually anything, even infections in your boot file.

[blade85]

I use avast. Its free and incredibly good (specially the updated version). did I mention its free...
Also doesn't slow your computer down at all, but still manages to scan files as you load them in the background (also scans web pages you visit on the go, warning you if it spots anything and blocking the site till you've given it the all clear).

these guys seem to agree http://freebies.about.com/od/securityfreebies/tp/best-antivirus.htm

For spywares I use the free version of Lavasofts Ad-Aware.

Then for even further security I use Firefox with the add ons- Adblock plus and script blocker

3 years later...still no virus infection, only once did I manage to find a spyware..and even that was from a programme I deliberately installed.

[Rik]

Microsoft Security Essentials.

Nuff said.

[martyh]

Microsoft Security Essentials.

Nuff said.

i used to use MSE and swore by it but when it let a AV virus through forcing a reinstall i got rid and use VMs now much better stops anything and does a good job of cleaning trojans and pretty much anything else

[apb27]

security essentials for the win, its perfect

[Ben B]

MSE cause VM gave too many false positives

[BomberAF]

I use VM's PCGuard because it is free and comprehensive. However I switch off the firewall and use Windows firewall instead.

I have had a few problems though. PCGuard cannot block or clean some trojans. So, as backup I keep a copy of Spyhunter on my system ready to run just in case. This will clean virtually anything, even infections in your boot file.

DO NOT USE windows firewall as it is hopeless, it is only a one way firewall, and on top of that it may as well not be installed.

Use PC tools firewall,it's free and does the job of any paid for AV Firewall.

[Stuart]

DO NOT USE windows firewall as it is hopeless, it is only a one way firewall, and on top of that it may as well not be installed.

Use PC tools firewall,it's free and does the job of any paid for AV Firewall.

Actually, I believe the firewall included in XP SP3 is two way. It's still not great, but it's a *lot* better than it was.

[BomberAF]

ALL windows firewalls are 1 way firewalls, you can even look the windows firewall up on the web and see thereviews and advice that the pro's give it.

[Ben B]

No they're not, Windows 7 Firewall is most definitely 2 way

---------- Post added at 22:19 ---------- Previous post was at 22:15 ----------

...and so is Windows Vista

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Firewall

[manofdevon]

Thanks for all the replies, I will give the virgin virus protector a run next week and only the Windows XP/3 firewall when my Bullguard runs out, but if it slows me down, I shall go back to bullguard.

[BomberAF]

Told you don't use the Windows Firewall even if it does have a double firewall cause it is absolutly pants, use the PC Tools firewall.

[carmad]

I have been using the latest version of Virgin Media Security Total since last November in Vista and have experience no problem at all.:)

[roughbeast]

I seem to have started something here re firewalls rather than general security. Yes, Windows 7 firewall does operate 2-way and is a vast improvement on earlier versions. It does however have a difficult interface and is without certain features like port-forwarding. However most of us have router firewalls too. Doesn't this give us some duplication of protection?

I scrapped VM's WNR2000 for a WNDR3700, because it is gigabit all round. I can port forward from there and manipulate other aspects that Windows doesn't. This, in conjunction with Windows firewall, has all the firewall features I think I need.

[BomberAF]

I seem to have started something here re firewalls rather than general security. Yes, Windows 7 firewall does operate 2-way and is a vast improvement on earlier versions. It does however have a difficult interface and is without certain features like port-forwarding. However most of us have router firewalls too. Doesn't this give us some duplication of protection?

I scrapped VM's WNR2000 for a WNDR3700, because it is gigabit all round. I can port forward from there and manipulate other aspects that Windows doesn't. This, in conjunction with Windows firewall, has all the firewall features I think I need.

No Hardware and Software Firewalls are completly different and can be used with one another. Here is an article that will address some of the pro's and con's of each of them.


Q. I'm about to get my first broadband connection, and I know I need to get a firewall. However, I've been getting some conflicting advice as to what type of firewall I need. Some people tell me I should get a hardware firewall, while others tell me a software firewall is preferred. What's the difference, and more importantly, which is better?

A. Good question. The truth is that in a typical home office environment, one type of firewall isn't necessarily better than the other. They are some differences, though, and they can be used together to give you an even greater degree of protection.

Hardware firewalls are important because they provide a strong degree of protection from most forms of attack coming from the outside world. Additionally, in most cases, they can be effective with little or no configuration, and they can protect every machine on a local network.

A hardware firewall in a typical broadband router employs a technique called packet filtering, which examines the header of a packet to determine its source and destination addresses. This information is compared to a set of predefined and/or user-created rules that determine whether the packet is to be forwarded or dropped. A more advanced technique called Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI), looks at additional characteristics such as a packet's actual origin (i.e. did it come from the Internet or from the local network) and whether incoming traffic is a response to existing outgoing connections, like a request for a Web page.

But most hardware residential firewalls have an Achilles' heel in that they typically treat any kind of traffic traveling from the local network out to the Internet as safe, which can sometimes be a problem.

Consider this scenario: What would happen if you received an e-mail message or visited a website that contained a concealed program? Let's say this program was designed to install itself on your machine and then surreptitiously communicate with someone via the Internet — a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack zombie or a keystroke logger, for example? And trust me, this is by no means an unlikely scenario.

To most broadband hardware firewalls, the traffic generated by such programs would appear legitimate since it originated inside your network and would most likely be let through. This malevolent traffic might be blocked if the hardware firewall was configured to block outgoing traffic on the specific Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) port(s) the program was using, but given that there are over 65,000 possible ports and there's no way to know which ports a program of this nature might use, the odds of the right ones being blocked are slim.

Moreover, blocking too many ports would almost certainly adversely affect your ability to use some programs (many games, for instance). Also, some broadband router firewalls don't even provide the ability to restrict outgoing traffic, only incoming traffic.

Advantages of Software Firewalls
Now consider what a software firewall might do in the aforementioned scenario. When you first set up a software firewall, you can specify which applications are allowed to communicate over the Internet from that PC. Programs that aren't explicitly allowed to do so are either blocked or else the user is prompted for confirmation before the traffic is allowed to pass. Therefore, it would likely intercept this kind of traffic before it left your computer.

Another potential scenario where a software firewall would be useful is in the case of an e-mail worm with its own e-mail sever, like the recent "SoBig" worm. Its built-in mail server could attempt to send mail on the valid Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) port (25), which would probably pass through the router because of its trusted origin.

On the other hand, a software firewall could be configured to only allow Microsoft Outlook to use port 25 (assuming Outlook is your e-mail client). Any attempt by another application to use the port would be dropped, or blocked pending user confirmation. For that matter, the application's attempt to use any port would be blocked if the firewall was configured that way.

By comparison, a hardware firewall that had the ability to filter outgoing traffic might allow you to block most kinds of traffic from a particular PC, but it wouldn't be able to flag you and alert you to repeated attempts to infiltrate your computer.

One obvious downside to software firewalls is that they can only protect the machine they're installed on, so if you have multiple computers (which many small offices do), you need to buy, install, and configure a software firewall separately on each machine. This can get expensive and can be difficult to manage if you have a lot of computers.

But the fact of the matter is that software firewalls generally offer the best measure of protection against certain types of situations like Trojan programs or e-mail worms. Speaking of which, a firewall isn't the only protection method available to you. Whether you end up using a software firewall or a hardware firewall, you should always supplement it with anti-virus software.

A good anti-virus package is just as important as a firewall, and I would seriously suggest that you invest in a good one. However, keeping your virus definitions updated is far more important than which program you use. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Making sure your definitions are current is absolutely critical to maintaining your protection. Many Anti-virus programs today can be configured to automatically update themselves, so you have no excuse for not maintaining them.

The bottom line is that with any home-office broadband connection, a hardware firewall should be considered a bare minimum, and supplementing it with a software firewall on one or more computers (and don't forget anti-virus software) is almost always a good idea.


And regarding Windows Firewalls and why you shouldn't use it:

Some people prefer to use a third party firewall instead of the built-in Windows Firewall in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. This article will discuss if Windows Firewall is enough to protect your network, data and computers.

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/35789.aspx#ixzz0l9sESnaB

Overview

There are numerous third party firewalls on the market – both paid and free - from a variety of vendors. The best software firewall is one that:

* Will not leak data and passed many leak testing done by researchers
* Will protect the computer against exploits and bad packets
* Will allow people to control which applications will make a connection and which is not (this is also known as rule-based firewall)
* Will be able to defend its processes, services and components against being terminated by malware

Windows Firewall: Is It Enough?

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/35789.aspx#ixzz0l9sIlsmt

Leak Testing: Windows Firewall has failed with leak testing done by security researchers. This means your data can leak through the firewall to the outside! You obviously don’t want people to be able to find out what’s in your computer, so you should be using a firewall that does not leak. If you'd like to find out how your current firewall performs against leak tests, head over to Matousec’s Proactive Security Challenge website.

That said, even if a firewall passed the leak tests, it does not mean that it is enough. You will need to know if the firewall can block port scans, unsolicited requests and hacking attempts or some sort of attacks in your network.

Exploits, Bad Packets and Port Scans: If you will check DShield’s Top 10 Reports (DShield monitors and analyze the firewall logs submitted by the community of volunteers to alert us whether a particular network is compromised or being attacked by hackers or if the current internet attacks is caused by worms, bots and other type of malware), you will see which ports are actively receiving attacks and also, the top 10 IP addresses as the source of attacks on the internet. So how these known attacks can affect you and how the firewall software should be able to help you against the said threats?

Windows Firewall in XP, if the system is infected will fail to block any outside connection being use by the malware. This means, Windows Firewall in XP is not enough because you’ll never know if any malware is using your connection to infect others and that is because XP’s firewall does not offer outbound monitoring. Your ISP will be alerted and you should receive a notice (if they able to identify which computers in their network has become infected and spreading or distributing malware or infecting other computers without their knowledge). Windows Firewall in Vista might be able to protect if you enable the outbound protection. However, if there is security vulnerability in Windows components or services which the firewall depends on to run or operate, you might not be able to get better protection until a security update is released and has been applied to fix the problem. This incident happened in the past: Blaster and Sasser worms took advantage of the security flaws in RPC service in Windows. Microsoft has improved Windows Firewall and continues to release security update which is why it is important to keep our system up-to-date. Past it past, you might say… but you’ll never know when vulnerability will be found again, which services in Windows will be affected and who is impacted. It’s good already that it was fixed but we should not depend on luck in protecting our computers and the network.

Not all firewall software including Windows Firewall in XP and Vista can pass port-scanning and exploits test. It depends on which ports are opened and if you have vulnerable applications. It’s a good idea to try Port Scanning or Exploits test using Shields Up! or PC Flank to test your firewall.

Controls: Many applications that require internet connection should be monitored by firewall software. The importance of using a rule-based firewall is you will have control which ports that any application can use to communicate. Example: A browser requires Port 80 to communicate to the internet using HTTP protocol. If you have a rule-based firewall, you can use it by allowing only a particular or set of ports to use by your browser. And then you can create other firewall rules that will block other ports or connection that you believe, not needed. Windows Firewall in Vista will let you create a inbound and outbound firewall rules but not in Windows XP, for it only have inbound protection.

Self-Defense: Windows Firewall in can be easily terminated or stop by other applications and it was documented by many security researchers including Matousec. People who have Windows Vista and Windows 7 with UAC enabled have better luck from unwanted termination of the firewall because you will receive the alert, if any malicious application will try to disable or terminate the firewall service or processes.

Tips: Always check if your firewall can pass leaktest and port scanning. Also, make sure that the firewall software that you are using does not have un-patch vulnerabilities. Using vulnerable firewall software will not keep you protected against the known issues.
Conclusion

Windows Firewall is better than no firewall, but it doesn't offer the same protection as a third-party product such as Outpost Firewall.

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/35789.aspx#ixzz0l9sQ9eaM
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/articles/35789.aspx

[hifi2007]

any virus protection is better than having none at all
but its down to preference
these days theres alot pretty decent and free antivirus Alternitives out there
at the moment im using avast which i find ok i think there is slightly better out there such as nod32 but that does come with a price tag
and i think free is the way to go lol.
free can do the job in some cases better than some of the paid products such as mcfee and norton to name a few lol.
another decent one ive found to work ok is a antivirus program called ClamWin
which it kind of feels like nod32 but is free
but again its down to preference
check out filehippo . com has alot of free software on there

[BomberAF]

any virus protection is better than having none at all
but its down to preference
these days theres alot pretty decent and free antivirus Alternitives out there
at the moment im using avast which i find ok i think there is slightly better out there such as nod32 but that does come with a price tag
and i think free is the way to go lol.
free can do the job in some cases better than some of the paid products such as mcfee and norton to name a few lol.
another decent one ive found to work ok is a antivirus program called ClamWin
which it kind of feels like nod32 but is free
but again its down to preference
check out filehippo . com has alot of free software on there

What your saying is spot on, but I would like to add a bit of info regarding free AV's.

Any AV is only as good as the virus definitions it has in it's library. So if you have a free AV that only gets updated once every few weeks or months in some cases then you AV is not going to detect the latest threats this will render your PC unprotected. There is nothing wrong with the ability of a free av to detect viruses but as I have said they are only as good as the definitions they have in their data base. When you buy an AV your definitions are revised and updated if necassary very couple of hours.

MS Essentials is free and is updated in real time and it is very easy on the computers resources.

[izools]

IMHO Comodo Internet Security (freeware) is an excellent program.

I switched to it after using Avast! Antivirus and Cygate Personal Firewall for years prior after Avast! let through a virulent strain of Vundomondo through. Been using it about 3~4 years + and other than the odd false positive (which are easily reported and fixed in subsequent virus definition databases) it's been an absolute cracker.

Virus definitions are updated 2-3 times a week. And it has built in TSR Malware protection (TSR - Terminate and Stay Resident - meaning the anti malware engine starts very soon in the boot up process and isn't easily killed by Malware, making it very effective).

Thorough, full featured, light on resources, and relatively user friendly. Give it a shout ;)

And yes, it is freeware:

http://www.comodo.com/home/internet-security/free-internet-security.php