Malware and other nasty stuff.

[Andara Bledin]

[QUOTE=fireheart17;103011]Not to be rude, but Norton? Seriously?
/QUOTE]
Have you used Norton recently?

It's one of the least intrusive and most effective of the protection suites currently on the market.

I know its easy to just turn it off, but I always hated sitting there and suddenly "YOUR VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED!!!!!!!!"

Man, you have to be looking for things to bitch about if this is the worst you can come up with.

Let's see, I can either go into the program and tell it not to notify me, or I can run naked and run the risk of something nasty completely borking my system, forcing me to reinstall everything.

Yeah, that option to turn off the update notifications is looking awfully sweet by comparison.

^-.-^

[dendawg]

Man, you have to be looking for things to bitch about if this is the worst you can come up with.

Okay then, how about this: I had norton as an OEM pack-in with a Compaq desktop (2004, XP, 256 MB ram), and in my experience, was absolutely ineffective in preventing virus infections, second only in badness to MacAffee.

So far, the most effective A/V I've ever used is AVG, combined with SpyBot.

[Andara Bledin]

Norton back then was pretty shit. I never had issues with it (except for one release that had a broken installer, and even then it worked for me), but I know others who had major problems. And 256 RAM with Norton back then? I'd have been surprised if you didn't have issues. But judging Norton by a 2004 release is like judging Windows by, say, ME.

As for AVG, it's done nothing but fuck up every system I've ever owned that it was installed on. My boyfriend uses it with no issues, but it hates me. It's even managed to screw up shit at my workplace. Not for anyone else, just me. I feel so special. >_< As a result, I will never personally recommend it.

Malwarebites is awesome, and if you really know what you're doing, or you have access to a good community, HijackThis is exceedingly powerful. But if you don't know what you're doing, keep away, because you can absolutely bork your OS if you do the wrong thing with it.

^-.-^

[Rageaholic]

Wow. That was the worst virus I ever had. About a half an hour after I posted the last update, it happened again. It disguised as an adobe update and then did the same stuff the other trojans did. I ended up having to take it to a computer store and as a result I had no internet for 2 days! (it's the equivilent to Homer Simpson not having beer or TV). They ended up replacing the hard drive which unfortunately did not come with any anti virus software or any Microsoft office programs (and I lost the CD it came with when I got this laptop CURSES!!!). I now have Norton which may not be the best, but it is an improvement over Mcrapee. It was a royal PITA to get it back up and running, but thankfully it's over.

Trojans are the biggest pain in the ass and the bane of the internet's existance.

[Rageaholic]

lol I remember when my step-father-in-law needed computer help...I looked over his computer and basically every time he saw a pop up for a virus scanner, internet protection or a registry cleaner, he clicked the link and installed it.

I told him not to do this, and I deleted them all, but within a week they were all back, because no one knows as much about computers as he does of course and I must've been mistaken.

lol you'd think he would learn. I'm not the most computer savvy person, but I know enough not to download stuff I haven't heard of. Sadly, these fuckers I got managed to make their onto my desktop before I was even aware of their existance.

Malwarebites is awesome, and if you really know what you're doing, or you have access to a good community, HijackThis is exceedingly powerful. But if you don't know what you're doing, keep away, because you can absolutely bork your OS if you do the wrong thing with it.

^-.-^

Malwarebytes seems to be very specific with what it targets. In my case, I think it was too late to be effective and unfortunately only disabled my internet. They ought to allow an easy uninstall in case their programs don't work out for you.

[Andara Bledin]

I don't do updates by popup.

If I get an update notice, I'll either go to the site, or launch the program and update from within.

There's just too much opportunity of a popup being spoofed.

^-.-^

[BrenDAnn]

I have Norton and Malwarebytes, and I have no problems, knock on wood. Sorry you had to lose your programs and all, Rage. I think that would drive me crazier than the trojan/virus itself!

[RedRoseSpiral]

The only time my Avast and Malwarebytes has let me down is when someone was hardcore hacking me through an old WoW account I had (thankfully a trial account I never attacked a credit card to). I ended up doing a factory restore on my lappy and everything has been peachy since.

[blas87]

My laptop crashed this past May. It was something disguised as my own virus protection or whatever telling me that my computer was at high risk and did some sort of "scan" and found all of these trojans and computer herpes and whatnot, and it was telling me I had to order the package to fix it.

Before I could even think, the whole thing died.

Somehow, my mom was able to restore the damn thing. I don't know where it came from. But it was surely scary.