spam and virus advice

[Guest]

hi, can anyone recommend, with hand on heart, any particular combination of
anti virus and anti spam (we get hundreds a day) before I renew Norton? It
catches about 70% of the SPAM but often hangs Outlook. Anti virus seems ok
but just wanted some advice from others if poss? This is for home PC with 2
wireless networked laptops. Thank you!

 

[Guest]

I use McAfee Internet Protection 2006 - I only install Antivirus, and
SpamKiller, and I can safely say that it is by far the best I have used.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

hi, can anyone recommend, with hand on heart, any particular
combination of anti virus and anti spam (we get hundreds a day)
before I renew Norton? It catches about 70% of the SPAM but often
hangs Outlook. Anti virus seems ok but just wanted some advice from
others if poss? This is for home PC with 2 wireless networked
laptops. Thank you!

Norton Anti-virus, in my view, is probably the *worst* anti-virus product
available, and McAfee is second worst. You're almost certainly better off
with one of the freeware products available, like Avast (my personal choice)
or AVG.

Regarding Anti-spam, I use a combination of what my ISP does and what
Outlook 2003 does, so I have no advice for you.

 

[Guest]

Yes, AVG is quite good. Bear in-mind it doesn't protect against adware or
Trojans though, and these are more of a problem than viruses nowadays.
Lavasoft Ad-aware is a useful addtition.

The best answer to spam is not to let spammers get hold of your address in
the first place. By far the most common way they do is via unprotected
mailto: links on websites. Once an account is being spammed heavily the best
answer is to change it.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Yes, AVG is quite good. Bear in-mind it doesn't protect against
adware or Trojans though,

Right. No anti-virus program does.

and these are more of a problem than
viruses nowadays.

Although spyware/adware infestations are more *common* than viruses
nowadays, I don't agree that they are more of a problem. A virus can
typically do much more damage than spyware/adware.

Lavasoft Ad-aware is a useful addtition.

Yes, but it alone is not enough. No single anti-spyware program is enough
protection. Note what Eric Howes, who has done extensive testing on
Anti-Spyware products, states:

"No single anti-spyware scanner removes everything. Even the best-performing
anti-spyware scanner in these tests missed fully one quarter of the
"critical" files and Registry entries" See
http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-test-guide.htm

 

[Joe Burnham]

hi, can anyone recommend, with hand on heart, any particular
combination of anti virus and anti spam (we get hundreds a day) before
I renew Norton? It catches about 70% of the SPAM but often hangs
Outlook. Anti virus seems ok but just wanted some advice from others
if poss? This is for home PC with 2 wireless networked laptops.
Thank you!

Try a free one called "Mail Box Dispatcher 2". I've tried many, and
(for me) this one has proved to be the best.

It uses a combination of "learning" and white list/black list
functions... It downloads the message header and the first few lines to
a browser-like interface.

You've got the option to "un-mark" a message that the program has marked
for deletion too.

Here's the URL:
http://www.anti-spam-tools.com/?ref=HelpMenu

 

[Guest]

For the SPAM problem you can switch to Mozilla Thunderbird. It contains a
very nice anti-spam filter with a trainable interface. Quite often I may get
as much as 20 or 25 emails in the morning but when I click on the folder to
review them, most, if not all, of them are immediately moved to the Trash
folder. Filters are applied when you access the folder containing the
incoming emails. One very nice filter is the "if the sender isn't in my
address book, it's SPAM" filter. If you're running a business, then this
won't work because of the legitimate, unsolicited emails you might get.
Other filters can be created easily.

As for anti-virus, I use AVG free. It is very nicely packaged and is
extendable to emails. Anti-adware is taken care of nicely by AdAware.

GP

 

[Guest]

thank you all very much for your advice - much appreciated.

Sall