Free AntiVirus and Spyware Software

As I have said here many times, I love free software, especially as there are so many good one out there. In an upcoming blog, I will tell you about some of the good ones that I have found and recommend. But, for this blog, I will concentrate on free antivirus and spyware software.

Recently, Download.com came out with their top ten list of the best free antivirus and spyware killer software. It is a good list that you should carefully read to see if there is something there for you.

Two of the best antivirus software programs that are on their list are AVG and Avast!. I have been using both for some time now and both perform quite well. I have used Avast! on my office and laptop computer for sometime now and have been very pleased. I recently rebuilt an older computer to use at home since I moved my main computer to my new studio. I decided to try AVG and it is also very good, as best as I can tell. After reading the reviews, I would say that both Download.com and lots of their readers agree with me on the quality of both software programs.

As for spyware detection software, the review lists Microsoft's Windows Defender as a beta software. As of a few days ago, this program is out of beta and is now released as a final version. It is free and available on the Microsoft website. I used it when it was a beta program and found it to be quite good. I don't use it anymore as I purchased CounterSpy (see below). Never-the-less, Windows Defender is a good package and deserves your attention if want one for free.

Two other programs that are on their list are Hijack This and Spycatcher Express. I don't know much about either, but they both got good reviews from users. Might be worth a try.

Another interesting program on their list is a program called CC Cleaner. It cannot be classified as either antivirus and spyware software, but it does sound interesting. It removes unused and temporary files from your system, as well as cleaning traces left by Windows, Internet Explorer, and many third-party applications. It looks like it is worth a try, at least according to the reviews.

There are two other items to relate to you about a couple of commercial software packages that you are probably familiar with. Recently, a friend brought his laptop computer to me because it was running so slow and strange things seemed to going on. After running a couple of tests, I found out that my friend was not exaggerating. It wasn't just slow, it was crawling.

Their spyware software didn't find any issues and neither did their Norton Software. I downloaded a courtesy copy of Counterspy, the spyware software I use. It took over 20 minutes to download over a fiber connection (compared to less than a minute on my own laptop).

After installation, I ran Counterspy. It found that someone had installed a vicious spyware software on my friend's laptop. With this program, they could easily spy on my friend from a remote location, record their keystrokes, and read all their e-mail, just to name a few things. The software can only be loaded manually, not by planting a virus or from an attachment on an e-mail. Identity theft is a breeze with this program. The best we can figure is that someone loaded the software while the computer was in a hotel room (he travels a lot).

The point of this story was to tell you how good CounterSpy is and that it is worth the $19.95 to buy it (there is also a $9.95 annual renewal fee after the first year). I am not sure that many programs could have picked up the nasty spyware on my friend's computer. In fact, the manufacturer of this spyware brags on their website that it is undetectable. Sometimes it pays to pay.

The second part of this story is about what happened after I deleted the spyware. I found the computer was still running slowly. I had heard that Norton software really slows down a computer and my friend had both Norton Antivirus and Firewall software installed. After uninstalling the Norton software, the computer suddenly was much faster and worked normally. By uninstalling Norton, I picked up an additional 80 mgs of usable memory.

So, I guess the moral of this story is that their definitely is some software that is worth buying and some big name brand software that is not worth buying. I hope you get something useful out of all this.

PS: I install one of the free anti-virus program on his computer after deleting Norton.