Computer security

[Jen12]

I just got an email stating that my automatic renewal for my Norton is coming up. They want $70.00! I'm pretty sure that is more than I originally paid for the software!

Does anyone know of a way to get this inexpensively? I'm not super computer savvy, so I go for the easiest way possible to do these things. Unfortunatley, this is what the software companies take advantage of.

[OakLeaf]

What operating system? How do you connect to the Internet?

On Windows, DH is plenty satisfied with Microsoft's new-ish free antivirus. Then you want to check the settings on your router's and/or computer's firewall, and use good computer hygiene. He hasn't logged a virus in years.

[Irulan]

Microsoft "Security Essentials" is what it's called. We run that, plus Malware Bytes (pro) on all our systems and it's been great. We haven an engineering firm with multiple computers, servers and so on. The company that builds our computers recommended ditching Norton years ago. It's a huge resource hog, for starters. You can run the Malware Bytes free version too, as there's only a few minor feature differences.

[Cataboo]

Go to ninite.com - it's an installation website that will install a bunch of software on your computer, and strips off all the additional things or toolbars that a lot of the free software tries to bundle in.

Scroll down to security and they have a bunch of options to check off - I like avast and run spybot & ad-aware to boot. But microsoft essentials and mal-aware is also an option on there.

[Norse]

+1 on the Malware. We also have Avast which was recommended by a computer geek guy who did some work for us. He doesn't like Norton and thinks McAfee is garbage.

[tulip]

My computer repair guy put Avast on mine. It's the only one he uses, and he knows about these things. It's free, too.

[Aggie_Ama]

Running Avast when I found out how expensive Norton was to renew. Been happy with it.