Anti-Virus Software

We recommend Kaspersky Anti-Virus software. Compare Kaspersky to the competition.

The virus scene has changed dramatically over the last few years. Gone are the days when viruses were created by some nerdy 13 year old with too much time on their hands.

Today viruses are in the hands of spammers and criminals who often work hand in hand to get your money.

The most dangerous viruses to you pocket book are broadly classified as criminalware. These viruses take great care not to damage your computer and to try and remain hidden. This is why they are often referred to as Trojans (Trojan Horses). They have many purposes, but the most common are:

Mail Hosts. A mail host virus turns your computer into a mail server that can be remotely controlled. This enables a spammer to hide behind the identity of your computer to send spam. Because the IP address of your computer changes, it is quite difficult to identify you computer as the source of the spam, which is the whole point. However, once identified, mail coming from you will be blocked as your computer will be identified as a rogue spammer. This will prevent your own legitimate email from being delivered. Once this happens, you are on a DNSBL list, and these can be very difficult to get off. As a mail host, time on your computer is sold (by the person who infected it) to spammers all over the world normally in 2 or 4 hour blocks of time.

Phisher. A phisher virus will scan your computer looking for anything that looks like a credit card number, bank account number or something similar. This information is collected and sent back to the person who infected your computer

Keylogger. A keylogger saves every keystroke you make on your keyboard and saves them to a file on your computer. These are files are then sent on a schedule back to the person who infected your computer. Once received, the text file can be examined looking for passwords, credit card numbers or any other valuable information you may have typed on you keyboard.

Annoying are viruses that create popups when you visit certain web sites. These are often referred to as spyware, but the nature of spyware has changed and these now behave more like viruses as new popups can be sent to them on a scheduled basis. Enough of these and your computer becomes so slow that it is no longer usable.

Your Strategy.

Viruses can infect your computer in so many ways that the only real sure method left to keep your computer virus free, is not to turn it on. This not being a practical strategy, good anti-virus software is the key. Not as easy a choice as you might imagine. Good virus software should trap both viruses and spyware. Unfortunately, most of the well known ant-virus software that has been around for years have become targets for the criminals that work to infect your computer. As the enemy, the first order of business is to cripple the anti-virus software you have installed. Criminals work hard at finding small holes that they can crawl through with the sole purpose of crippling your anti-virus software. Once this is achieved they can proceed to install the viruses they need to take control of your computer.

So, the trick is to find anti-virus software that:

• Is very effective in trapping both viruses and spyware.
• Updates hourly, as opposed to the more well known anti-virus software packages that update weekly. Your computer may ask for updates daily, but unless the maker of the software releases updates daily, you only get updated every week when updates are released. With the ever increasing number of viruses released into the wild, this is no longer sufficient.
• Is either not main stream in the user market, or is very resistant to crippling. Preferably both.
• Has the ability to recognize "Zero Day" viruses. These are viruses that are so new they have not been added to the anti-virus database yet.

We get infected computers into our repair center every day and so have ample opportunity to test the effectiveness of ant-virus software from different manufacturers every day. Our recommendation at the top of this page is a reflection of that.