I'm in search for a good program that get's rid of viruses and spyware. I currently only have Ad-Aware, which is prety good, but does not cover the viruses.

If anybody has a good virus scanner, which is FREE, and that is good, post up please.

Jacko

www.grisoft.comNot Being A Complete Idiot is as good a virus defence as anything else.

In other words, any email that says something along the LINES of "Hey! Wanna see Russian-teenage-lesbian-dwarves stick things into certain bodily orifices? Click on this strange-looking *.exe file!" should automatically be assumed to be either spyware, virus, dialer or all of them.Jacko, please be aware that FREE stuff has errors and flaws in it.... It's FREE for a REASON. Just spend to $40.00 to get a REAL one. This will save you a LOT of grief later. Trust me...

[glb]Flame[/glb]Flame, I am using free virus scanner, free firewall... no problems in that department. Like Corrosive said, not being an idiot is your first line of defence. Secondly, as far as I know all viruses scanners use pretty much the same virus library or whatever anyway so essentially their core ability is the same.Thanks all!

I think I'll stick with my Ad-Aware which is good for spyware and stuff, and take Corrosibves advice for not being an idiot and opening viruses.

Thanks,

Jacko
Jacko, not being an idiot is no excuse for not actually having a virus scanner. I believe corosive was talking about obvous viruses. Some are hidden and not so obvious. You never know... one could sneak past even the most vigilent person.The bottom line is..... There are some things that are a MUST for computers..... Firewalls and virus scanners are 2 of them. Just THINK about it. If you get one of these, then give yourself a pat on the back for THINKING. Does this make ANY sense?

[glb]Flame[/glb]Rather than giving yourself a pat on the back for an essential... maybe we should whack people who don't have them in the back with a large kazaa-defeating stick? As there seems to be some minor confusion in what I meant in that last post, I'll give you Tom's TOP TIPS (see what I did there ) on not falling for email trickery:

1 - If you receive an email from Symantec, McAffee, Grisoft, Microsoft, The President or another major corporation that warns of the latest virus, delete it. Unless you have explicitly signed up for virus updates from the company in question, they will NEVER send email warnings. A lot of the time, these emails also contain attachments - even if they did send out warnings, they'd link to it so it can be downloaded from their site.

[A varient of this trick has also caught people out. If you receive an email from eBay, Hotmail etc, asking you to update your payment details or something to that extent, delete it. Especially if it asks for your password and/or any financial details. It's a common identity theft trick]

2 - If the body of the email asks you to "forward it to all your friends" or something to that extent, delete it. And for God's sake don't forward it - especially if I'm in your address book. This is a trick used mostly with scams and virus hoaxes (which can sometimes be as bad as a real virus). No reputable company will ask for you to do this.

3 - Many of these emails will contain something like "Microsoft REPORTS that VirusX will wipe your hard drive, take all your financial reports and violate your cat". If in doubt, check if they did actually say that. Google News could help here but if you type in the 'virus' in question into Google you'll normally get usable information.

4 - Turn on the file extensions. Go into Start > Settings > Folder Options, then click on the 'View' tab and uncheck 'Hide file extensions for known file types'. From there, you can easily spot any executable files in the email (they'll have the extensions .exe, .pif and .scr).

5 - Disable the preview pane. Many viruses take advantage of a loophole in Outlook Express and many other clients, which allows the virus to automatically execute when the message is previewed. Also disable the automatic download of .exe files in IE (search through Tools > Internet Options. It's in the 'Advanced' tab.)

And finally:
6 - Do your homework. If in doubt, search for info. www.snopes.com ('Inboxer Revolution') is also a good place to find out information on viruses, scams and hoaxes.