fight viruses & spyware

[3/6/13] The best antivirus for 2013.  Neil Rubenking the antivirus/security products for 2013.  AVG took the honors for the best free antivirus (over avast!).  Comodo Cleaning Essentials was the top free cleanup-only antivirus (over malwarebytes, though malwarebytes was the top if you read the review).

[5/11/12] Way back in the day ZoneAlarm set the computer security world alight with a cool, very powerful personal firewall product which defined the world of Windows PC safety for years.

Then the company seemed to lose its way, the technology started to wilt, and their products disappeared from popular use as other products took over. Well they're back.

ZoneAlarm Free AntiVirus + Firewall takes the original personal firewall product and tacks on an anti-virus pack, so you get a two-in-one lock down of your computer where it counts.

[7/16/11] Trying out Multi-AV. "The Multi-AV Scanning Tool is a software utility that provides multiple anti malware command line scanners to find or detect malware as well as remove it from your computer."

Hitman Pro is another one to use to double-check after you used your normal scanner(s).

[1/26/11] Top 10 Best Free Antivirus Software for 2011 (according to SofoTex)

[5/22/05] Free alternatives to Norton and McAfee.

AVG Free Edition

Panda ActiveScan (online scanner)

Trend Micro Housecall (online scanner)

One I'm trying out now is Avast

[8/21/05] AntiVir is another one. I think I tried this before, but decided not to use it. [4/25/10 - Avira has a pretty good review at download.com.]

[8/5/06] Cyberhawk's ActiveDefense technology hunts down and paralyzes threats that are too new or too clever to be recognized by traditional security software. [via frwr-news, 7/23/06]

[8/10/06] Active Virus Shield is free anti-virus for your PC that combines traditional antivirus programs, stopping them before they can infect your computer.
Active Virus Shield is brought to you as a free service of AOL and is based on Kaspersky Lab's award winning Personal Anti-Virus. [frwr-news]

[1/2/08] PC Tools AntiVirus Free Edition provides world-leading protection, with rapid database updates, IntelliGuard™ real-time protection and comprehensive system scanning to ensure your system remains safe and virus free. PC Tools products are trusted and used by millions of people everyday to protect their home and business computers against online threats. [via frwr-news]

[7/12/08] Kapersky removal tools [frwr-news, 2008-06-29]

[8/31/08] a couple more: Rising AntiVirus, Moon Secure AV [via frwr-news]

[10/20/09] new, free Microsoft Security Essentials [via twitter.com/cyberlifepc]

For spyware:

Lavasoft Ad-Aware

Spybot Search & Destroy

[7/4/05] Yahoo! Anti-Spy, which comes with the Yahoo! Toolbar, looks like it has promise. Its partner is PestPatrol and, I suspect, is using PestPatrol technology

[7/4/05] According to the Adware Report (found as a google sponsored link), the best spyware product currently is Aluria Software's Spyware Eliminator

[8/21/05] Spyware Tools

[9/28/05] This guy uses multiple layers of security on his computer (see Reader Feedback)

[12/11/05] From frwr-news, I tried out the EMCO Malware Destroyer. It seemed to catch a lot of junk, though there were two items (NMC.WSN and NMC.WHENU.WEATHERCAST) it found but didn't removee.

[12/20/05] Oh yeah, Microsoft AntiSpyware seems to be OK too, though it's still in beta (for WinXP).

[2/27/06] SpyCatcher

[6/3/06] superantispyware might find spyware that others miss, but it's reportedly slow [frwr-news]

[6/13/06] SpyDefense [from frwr-news / haven't tried it out yet, for Windows XP and the like]

Firewalls:

ZoneAlarm

Sygate

[1/19/06] More firewalls

[8/15/05] more scanners

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[5/26/06] Here's a handy place to download free anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewalls

[11/13/06] GeeksToGo mentions many of the products mentioned above

[11/19/06] Michael Zipf's list

[5/25/08] filehippo lists many of the popular anti-virus and spyware programs