The free ones are not just "good enough", they are excellent! :) Spybot is donation-ware and free for private and commercial use, Ad-Aware is free for personal use only. I also use a free firewall (Kerio) and free antivirus (Avast).

Sad to say, it is getting to the point where the big companies are driving away paying customers into the arms of the freeware publishers. I am a typical home user, who over the years has added computers one at a time to a home network. It has gotten to the point now with the bigger software companies like Symantec that I can no longer afford to be a customer. If I want Norton Utilities on five machines, I have to buy five copies at about $100 Canadian apiece. Then I have to buy five copies of their Firewall. It is now at the point where I have to spend almost $1,000 a year to protect my computers if I buy full suites of their software. Clearly this is no longer viable for me.

If some benevolent company like AVG is willing to give me a free program that is also as effective as a full pay program, then I am not going to fork out hundreds of dollars. I wouldn't mind paying if they would grant me a multiuse license for a reduced price for a home user, but now they have priced themselves out of my reach.

Well I just installed all the stuff recommended so I'm hoping I'm protected.
One thing though, that Zone Alarm keeps popping up with messages telling me I'm being attacked and some program or file is trying to access explorer, I wasn't connected to the Net at the time so what's that all about?

Yeah, well that's what everyone thought about rubbers. :doh:

I orginally posted this for my gaming clan but it might help out.

Most people know what Anti-Virus software is, but alot don't know what a firewall is or does and what spyware is. This is a informational post so if you know about all this, don't worry about reading it.

First of all a firewall. When you're connected to the internet, especially broadband, your computer is connecting through several ports or "roads" that are open and vulnurable to attack. Just surfing the internet you might have 8 or more ports open. A hacker can then gain access to your computer and plany a virus, a keystroke logger or possible use your computer to search for other computers to hack into. In short, they can do anything they want. A firewall not only stops hackers from coming in, it makes your computer invisible. There are two types of firewalls, hardware and software. A hardware firewall is typically in a router. So if you have a home network, you probably have a good firewall. The second type of Firewall is a software firewall. Several different software firewalls are out there, I prefer ZoneAlarm which is free. The nice thing about having a software firewall is that it not only stops traffic from coming IN you don't want, it things from going OUT unless you want them too. Wondering how secure you are? Go to

http://www.grc.com

Click on ShieldsUp. Scroll down and find "ShieldsUp" again click then click "proceed". You might get a windows security prompt just click yes, if not move to next step. There is a grey bar the says probe my ports. Click on that and see what happens. You should be running in stealth on most ports and maybe have one or two closed IF you're running a firewall. If you don't have a firewall you will have open ports. So if you need a firewall go to

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conten...=dbtopnav_zass

Download ZoneAlarm for free. Install it and you can take the built in tutorial if you'd like. Bottom line you MUST have some sort of firewall running, or risk being hacked.

On Spyware. Spyware gets on to your system by you surfing the internet and installing various software. Kazaa, Bonzai Buddy, weatherbug are all examples of Spyware. From Techtarget.com:

"In general, spyware is any technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet, spyware is programming that is put in someone's computer to secretly gather information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested parties. Spyware can get in a computer as a software virus or as the result of installing a new program. Data collecting programs that are installed with the user's knowledge are not, properly speaking, spyware, if the user fully understands what data is being collected and with whom it is being shared."

In a word, spyware is bad for privacy and will actually slow down your machine and internet connection. A great free program called Ad-Aware can be obtained from:

http://www.lavasoft.de/

Run this once or twice a week. You'll be suprised the first time you run it. **Warning if you do Peer to Peer (p2p) files sharing like Kazaa or Morpheous, Ad-Aware will get rid of it. Just re-install afterwards. If you insist onusing Kazaa, use KazaaLite.

Lastly is Anti-Virus software. You have to keep you virus defintions up to date. I personally use a free program called AVG which can be downloaded at:

http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

I like AVG because it's not as much as a memory hog as Norton or McAfee. Make sure that whatever virus software you choose, you schedule a scan every day and keep the virus definitions up to date. I also hit a couple of other sites a few times a week before I go to bed. These are free on-line Virus scanning.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

http://www.pandasoftware.com

For the above, click on ActiveScan on the bottom left

One more tip, defrag your hard drive at least once a month. In Windows XP got to Start-->All Programs-->Accesories-->System Tools--> Disk defragmenter.

So in short you can stay secure on the internet for free. Always realize no machine is completely un-hackable. If someone REALLY want to hack into your system it can be done. The whole idea though is, hackers will move past your machine and on the machines without security.

Hope it helps post if you have any questions. This has been a public service announcement from:

Rabyn

Excellent advice. I ran the security tests and scored a very high score, almost perfect. My systems run behind a router and also use Norton Internet Security. That will change once the current subscriptions run out, as I don't think I will be buying five copies of that program.

What´s the exact message?

Question is were you really unhooked? Maybe it was an internal program trying to access information so it can gather it and restransmit it to the proprieter.

Any PC that was under my control hasn't seen a virus since about 1993.

Spend the money for good AV software and a hardware or software firewall and run a quality spyware cleaner once a week and you should be OK, on condition that you don't open suspicious emails or visit shady sites.

Works for me! :yep:

Wow, that's wealth of info in this thread.

Let me add one more very nice peice of software to the list and that is Kerio's firewall. This thing is great.

http://www.kerio.com/kerio.html
________
Shery

For reviews and free trials of anti-spyware programs go to:

http://www.spyware-reviews.com/

It's a very neat site, you will see at a glance what the best program is. :up: :up:


When you want to upgrade your trial version to the fullversion it will cost around $29, but ofcourse free serials and cracks are all over the internet....

As an IT person that deals with this every day, my favorite is actually X-Cleaner.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3034.html

It can run from the web but I like to save it on my hard drive and not have to do an install. The freeware version can really zap just about everything.

The key to making this or any other spyware cleaner work is knowing what exe files that are spyware are running and then to stop them from running by using procexp.exe:

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilitie...sExplorer.html

-my 2 cents

CWShredder works for (Un)coolweb....just google it...

I have Zone Alarm also...turn off the notifications...those are port probes which are on-going, especially if you are high-speed and always connected...Zone Alarm has blocked over 36,000 attempts for me since I installed it 6 months ago...I dropped Norton when I purchased SHIII, because Norton is a resource hog and an antiquated program in my opinion... :sunny:

I also went AVG and it has been super. I have had many people follow and they are also very happy.
Because the free version can only be for non-commercial and for one un-networked PC this great protection prompts many to ge the pay version for their business. I know my daughter recommended it and her office has bought the commercial one. So, it has a benifit to GriSoft (AVG).
I am getting SpyBot now on the recomendations here to add to AVG.
I also endorse highly Firefox, what I differrent world than IE, a much better one!

Wulfmann