It is a fairly well-established fact that much of the everyday software we use is free for home users. Years ago we used to have freeware and shareware which to be frank, was a bit clunky and amateurish, but nowadays, often fully-fledged professionally tried and tested software is available to all and sundry - and the price... is borne by the commercial users.
In many cases, it is a cut-down version of software that is available for free, and this is the case for many anti-virus software packages such as AVG, who offer 'AVG free' to home users. This is the first of my recommendations for anti-virus programs - it is free, self updating and trusted by many many users worldwide.
Those in the know understand that anti-virus need to be supplemented with anti-malware too, and my offering for this is Malware Bytes, again a cut-down free offering, and this program needs updating manually. Finally, Microsoft themselves have stepped into the arena with Microsoft Security Essentials - and the beauty of this system is that it is not only fully-functioning, and self-updating, it is also equipped to fight viruses AND malware all in one package.
So that's my three offerings:
- AVG Free
- Malware Bytes Anti-Malware (MBAM)
- Microsoft Security Essentials
'Google' them to find a reliable download site (for the Microsoft program go direct to Microsoft) - Although some software of this type can conflict, I am happy to report that I run all three of these together on several PC's with no ill effects. Why have more than one? you may ask, and my answer is the old 'belt and braces' argument...two ways to attack viruses and malware has got to be better than one. These software options all have different priorities and different ways of detecting problems, so relying on just one may be too much of a risk.
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