What is the best free antivirus/spyware protection?

United States
April 28, 2009 12:39pm CST
Is the any reliable free antivirus with spyware protection out there or do I have to buy it? I'd much rather use my money for something else LOL Thanks for any help.
4 people like this
22 responses
28 Apr 09
AGV anti virus software
1 person likes this
• United States
28 Apr 09
I think u mean AVG right?
1 person likes this
28 Apr 09
yeh my mistake
1 person likes this
• Turks And Caicos Islands
23 Jul 12
I thinh very good
@pankkzz (24)
• India
28 Apr 09
use avast its free and doesnot slows your system!! Avast home edition 4.0 is best for home systems norton,kaSPERSKY and K7 will work good but not free and also they slows down your system
1 person likes this
• United States
28 Apr 09
Yeah I heard of that Avast glad you report it doesn't slow your system!
1 person likes this
• United States
29 Apr 09
I use avast, and I like it. It has really cool features too. and if you want to get something that does more, they do offer upgrades for a price. None of which I have bought, so I couldn't help there. But I do like the free version of avast. Hope this helps!
@abbey19 (3106)
• Gold Coast, Australia
29 Apr 09
I use the free edition of AVG which I find excellent, but no one Anti Virus will completely protect your computer, so on the recommendation of my computer technician who services all our computers, I have installed Spybot and Zone Alarm -in addition to the free AVG. That gives me good protection and they do not slow down my computers.
• United States
30 Apr 09
Thanks for commenting, I tried that AVG but to tell u the truth I'm now testing Avast and like it better so far. We'll see how it pans out.
@Barb42 (4214)
• United States
29 Apr 09
We have used AVAST for a long time for our anti-virus software. It is free.f you download your emails to your computer, it will also scan them for virus. We are very happy with it.
1 person likes this
• United States
30 Apr 09
I see we have another Avast vote! Thanks for your comment.
• Mexico
29 Apr 09
For me its ESET nod 32 and AVAST.Another good one is Super spyware remover.Its very useful.
1 person likes this
• United States
30 Apr 09
Ok cool Thanks!
@net_ankit (643)
• India
28 Apr 09
I am using AVAST antivirus from many time & I am totally satisfied with it, & it is also free & you can find out full version on some site without money. But no antivirus will protect you if you are not carefull for some things
1 person likes this
• United States
28 Apr 09
Ok another vote for Avast hmmm
1 person likes this
@amitksing (1323)
• India
28 Apr 09
As per my personal experience, no single anti virus programme can eradicate all the viruses from a system. Different such softwares are good for different types of viruses. For example, AVG is great at detecting Trojan Horses while McAFee is good with other types. I would thus suggest you to have 2 or 3 types of anti virus softwares, and install them one after another in a rotational manner (keep one anti virus programme for one week and then switch to the other one). Almost all the anti-virus softwares provide their trial versions fo free for a certain duration (about a month). If you use torrents, you can even download full version of such software.
1 person likes this
• United States
28 Apr 09
Thanks for your comment. I'll consider this.
1 person likes this
@youless (112091)
• Guangzhou, China
5 Mar 13
Here there is a famous antivirus software called 360. It not only detects and kills the computer virus, but also it can help you to fix your computer problems. This is a very useful feature. Besides, 360 is totally free of charge. And this is why I like to use it.
• India
28 Apr 09
There are 3-4 very good antivirus softwares with spyware protection. My first choice is always Kaspersky. Then Norton. Also there is F-Secure (Rediff uses F-Secure) and AVG. For home users, these softwares are very cheap. i.e. you will get it as low as 20$ per year.
• United States
28 Apr 09
I had Norton and never got it for $20 a year - at least not here in the U.S.
1 person likes this
@emojboy (632)
• Philippines
29 Apr 09
First, its better to have a high specs computer hardware because you can maximize your security in your desktop and laptop computer. I have 2 gigabytes in my RAM and Athlon X2 5000+ 2.6GHZ for my processor. I have been experiencing virus infections many times but its now, I have never experience that problem. I used three security programs for my windows xp service pack 2 operating system. Mcafee Enterprise 8.0.0 using its manual updates, Avira free edition, and comodo internet security. They are running in operating system at the same time. Since I used this kind approach for my security in my windows operating system it did prevent os crash or corruption.
• United States
30 Apr 09
Man! You're triple protected LOL Thanks for that information.
• India
23 Apr 12
I recommend you to use AVG antivirus..It is fast and doesn't slow your computer and provides better protection than other antivirus.
16 Jul 12
I have been using AVAST for about 2 years now and have been very pleased with the ease of use and its effectiveness. It was recommended to me by a friend and I have since recommended to several of my own friends and my mother.
• India
1 Sep 12
Just install Microsoft Securities Essential and forget everything. It has been in my laptop for quite sometime now. It detects viruses which many anti viruses fail to find. Also install the LinkEntend add-on on Firefox or Chrome. This will indicate about the safety of the pages you visit and warn you. Good day!
@jdawg011 (498)
• Canada
21 Feb 13
Hey, just wanted to say (even super late) that I can't believe there is no MalwareBytes on here. Avast is good, but MWB is probably the best virus removal software I have found. It's free. It doesn't interfere with your firewall if you have a different virus protection software installed. The only drawback is that it isn't great for preventing you from getting the viruses, but once you have them, it is one of the best, if not the best for getting rid of them.
@060157 (1059)
• Pakistan
29 Apr 09
i am quite surprised to see some people suggesting Norton, i simply find it extremely bulky anti-virus that slows the system down and also not that effective. i have been using AVAST anti-virus for over a year now and it has never disappointed me. it runs and protect the system and automatically upgrades its database and also does not slow down the system or the internet speed at all. it is free to register for one year and after the expiration of the date, all you have to do is to re-register. as for spyware protection, i use spybot search and destroy. it's also free to use.
@2wicelot (2945)
11 Sep 11
I have used AVG antivirus software before and I liked it very much because it was efficient and it didn't slow down my computer at all. I would suggest that you stick to AVG because I am not sure the other free ones out there would be this efficient. The name sounds weird to me. I think AVG should be sufficient for you so you should stick to it. AVG is absolutely free although you can pay for extra features. But I think the free version is sufficient for everyday use.
@emojboy (632)
• Philippines
1 May 09
I used Free Edition Avira it is very reliable to deleting virus especially infected .exe files. If I compare with it to AVG Free Edition, .exe infected by virus is cannot be detected immediately by AVG because it is running in real time aside from that it just slip away from AVG. If we are talking free antivirus or other internet security, I think torrent downloaded applications are free also because it free to download applications like antivirus in the torrent site.
@ra1787 (501)
• Italy
29 Apr 09
I'd advise you to use avira antivirus, which is free and offers a quite good protection. The only disadvantage is that it doesn't have an antispyware integrated in the free version so you have to use a separate software for that.
@icecubic (1845)
• Indonesia
11 Sep 11
hi guys, I suggest you to try avast free antivirus edition, it has many features and doesn't eat your ram memory. I have used this stuff since a couple years ago. the great thing is you can update the virus database "manually" at avast site, so you can boost the downloading time. they give daily updating. good luck
7 Dec 11
i recommend to use Norton AntiVirus software!!it efficiently detects and removes viruses, worms, and trojans automatically, without interrupting your work also protects latest spyware viruses and threats