You need to calm down. I’ve used many computers over many, many years, and I’ve never had a single incident of malware of any kind. The same thing goes for just about everyone I know, and that’s a LOT of PC’s. I would never recommend going without protection but there’s no need to get hysterical about it.

I have a complaint about the internet: Too many people saying that just because it doesn’t affect me personally, it’s not an issue.

@Surefire
Who needs to calm down? Who’s hysterical? Are you implying that the magazine’s reporting on this is alarmist or an over-reaction? Which bits of it?

Maybe PC Pro (Awfully titled cover this month…) could run an article on how to run as a ’standard user’ after setting up an Admin account with uac, across the board, set to full.

After all that would be very, very important and practical information to know. Then again MS would probably have to pay for an article such as that.

I use a Chromebook.

I’d be interested in hearing why Sophos was left out of that round up? Did they decline the opportunity?

Just switched to avast after reading this.

@All
So many straw many arguments based on what I said. I DID NOT say that there were no problems and I specifically said that I would never recommend not having protection. It’s just that this article is getting wee bit overheated considering that what PC-Pro recommends as the best one year often comes nowhere the next. Trying to have the ‘best’ protection is very much trying to shoot a rapidly moving target.

I often see lots of comments such as “I’ve been using security Product X for eleventy eleven years without a problem”. That’s all well and good, but what would be FAR more useful would be to hear from people brave enough to admit that they HAVE been infected, and a) what security products they were using at the time, and b) whether these were fully patched and up to date.

While choosing an excellent anti-malware product is a good defense against infection, it should not be your only one.

With the increasing popularity of Zero Day exploits in recent times as well as the threat of APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats) targeted against enterprises and companies of all sizes and threats such as ransomware we need to adopt a multi-layered approach to security. With these threats, at best the advanced heuristics or reputation scanning of your security product will remove some or all of the threats. At worst if these threats are brand new and have never been seen before your security product won’t even detect it since it relies on signatures.

I have cleaned infections from PCs running the following security products: Avast Anti-virus, PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Anti-virus, McAfee VirusScan, Norton Internet Security 2012, Kaspersky Internet Security 2011, and Microsoft Security Essentials. It was no coincidence that I also found out of date free software on these PCs e.g. Adobe Reader, Java, Flash etc. as well as missing Windows and Microsoft Office security updates.

I would recommend choosing an anti-malware based on PC Pro’s award winners and exercising caution on what links you click on. If you click on something you shouldn’t, don’t always expect your security software to save you from infection.

The most useful set of tips that I have encountered for staying safe online is the following blog post from Security journalist, Brian Krebs:

http://krebsonsecurity.com/tools-for-a-safer-pc/

I hope this helps. Thank you.

There has been no convincing argument yet to make me switch away from MSSE, and that is the end of the story. By and large, MS gets it right, with a product that is good enough, year in, year out.

I’ve no problem with the findings of the product review but found the front page ’shock horror’ headline laughably poor. Only after revealing that the headline refers to a free MS AV\security product do you realise that general Windows security ‘isn’t working’.

I assume that if in the near future PC Pro comes across a poor free Apple product that we’ll see ‘Apple products are crap!’ emblazoned across the front page. No? Didn’t think so.

Read this months Which magazine they rate security essentials no 1 as a best buy, how does that stack up with PC Pro’s review? As with all reviews you read them and take them with a proverbial pinch of salt.
At least the Which review is doing a real world/real user test compared to some of the more artificial scenarios that the tech magazines like to contrive. (esp with PCPro’s current anti anything without a fruity logo editorial policy)

I agree with the previous comments any security is better than no security.

Most of all though YOU are the best security of your computer. Consider what you are doing online before clicking OK, do you know what it is you are saying OK to is a reputable site and publisher, otherwise Cancel may the best option. Also don’t enter your email address and use the same password on any third party sites, especially those that offer to collect your contacts, its just a recipe for getting your account/PC infected or hijacked.

My issue with the review is that Avira Free seems to have slowed my PC down to the point of being unusable, and it pops up ads and “notifications” several times a day. Think I’ll take my chances with MSE.

The article was well timed for me, as my machine had developed a strong dislike to the Security I had been running for 4 – 5 years.

So I took onboard the advice and tried Bit Defender. it installed ok but required the use of a “downloader” rather than a once off Full donwload. (Dislike) Ignoring that it ran well and all seemed ok. Then the next thing I know I’m hit by Bit defenders rather annoying habit of overwriting the browsers homepage with about:blank. At first I thought I’d got a malware attack, but on a short excursion to google I find this is a well known, persistent and incredibly annoying known fault with Bit Defender.

*Dumped*

In the end I’ve returned to the od reliables of Kaspersky or Norton for paying customers, and MSE for low rent customers.

Running a repair shop I observe daily infections, with the worst offenders being Mcafee and the whole string of free suites.

As a paid suite Mcafee is abysmal.

Overall though regular updates, common sense and care make for safer Internet Connected computer use than almost any suite.

Got hit by Trojan horse Hider.MPR -
which produced an avgui.exe exception and blocked avg web access, switched off Windows firewall,disabled security centre, blocked MS web access, disabled spybot and caused multiple random ut inactive avg free 2013 screens.
Investigation by local PC centre unable to locate Trojan but found corrupted OS. – XP Pro svc.pack 3.
Anyone know anything about this?

I’ve been using MSE for a while now: first coupled with Malwarebytes free but now with the Pro version. They seem to work together extremely well. Both are realtime proactive systems.

Had Norton (never again,) Macafee, PC Tools+AV, Bit Defender free (paid version refused to work), Avira and Avast.

I left Avast last deliberately as it is another I’ll not use again. That programme totally ruined my laptop, eventually requiring a full reformat of Windows. The meltdown occurred after an Avast update was received and I subsequently ran a pre-boot scan.

So, Avast, in my view, stinks and if you are using it simply because of this Article, you may wish to think again. Avira is better.

AV’s and anti malware programs is big, big business….

it’s quite surprising you go to AV testing sight you get completely differing results going to another – so whos telling the truth, obviously it’s the testing method used.

But how do they get and make their money what worries me…. I never go by the ‘glossy’ writes up’s and always prefer the one that suits my needs.

No AV is perfect, you catch a virus that another AV will block. Go to any forum to judge their AV see problems folks are having.

I hate any AV, Avast is one that uses ‘piggy back installs’ a big, big problem along with BSOD’s at the moment, Avast pushes Chrome Drive and Google Chrome – sometimes without ones knowledge it get’s installed.