In which I Encounter a Virus

[the_deep_magic]

First item of business: gryffin_draco is a goddess among mortals and should be fanned with palm leaves while sitting upon a velvet-cushioned throne and being fed the exotic fruit of her choice.  I can't say for certain that, without her, my computer would have died a slow and painful death of e-syphilis, but it was sure as hell looking that way.  All praise and

Comments

[therumjournals]

I'd like your opinion on the best anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-cootie software out there. ....get a Mac!

okay, not really, 'cause that is definitely not a free or low-cost option. but it had to be said ;-)

[babykid528]

*LIKE*

(Shhh I'll pretend this is FB when I want to even though I hate that site! XD)

[theofenraven]

Free: MalwareBytes at CNet
Free: SuperAntiSpyware; this one also offers the advantage of a portable download, which you can put on your jump drive. Often, the virus won't let you start an anti-virus from your hard drive and one running on a jump drive can sometimes sneak past its defenses.

I've used the above two programs at work in tandem to knock out some serious crap. However, viruses are getting more lethal every second. I now have an affordable computer geek on speed dial, just in case.

About the wireless router: There should be instructions that came with it that tell you how to access the web settings of your router. USE THEM. Set a password asap! No one should be surfing these days on an open connection unless there is no help for it.

[plot_h0les]

Microsoft Security Essentials gets some of the best reviews out there, and it is free! If you have windows. If not, Avast! and AVG are both great free programs as well.

As for the password on your wireless, it is actually pretty easy to do, but possibly hard to explain. I'd be willing to write something up in a pm if you want! Just, make sure you use a WPA2 password ecryption, not just WEP, because that is not secure enough to save ou from scary things like the firefox ad-on that makes it so a 4 year old could steal all your passwords to bank accounts and such...

[gryffin_draco]

haha you're welcome bb! I'm glad everything worked out for you. <3 So many words I can say about that virus. Not a single one of them polite. I think I have a case for justifiable homicide should the name of its creator ever get leaked (I will hunt that bitch down and terminate with extreme prejudice).

As for maintenance, as ewinfic said, AVG used to be the be all, end all but it got too popular and became a target for hackers. Right now the best I can recommend is manually updating and quick scanning with Malwarebytes once a week or every other week to clear your computer of malware while using the free version of Avast! Antivirus and running virus scans every so often. It's currently top of the class for anti-virus programs, autoupdates its virus definitions seemingly hourly, and has a number of good security features. You can choose to pay for it and get even more advanced features, but if you're diligent you don't really need the paid for version.