Can anyone recommend a free anti-virus program? Its for a laptop, I use it to surf the web, no.. no porn sites, and homework.

Avast has never let me down. It's gotten a bit more annoying recently, but you can turn all the non-AV shit off. I can't recall the last time it hit on anything _ and I DL a bunch from torrents / questionable sites.

avoid norton/mcaffe due to nagging. AVG was my choice for many years, but then it got intrusive. It might be better now.
Kaspersky (sp) and Avira have had good things written about them, but I have no experience.
MS' built-in AV in win10 isn't great, but it's free. MSE worked on a few systems on Win7 for my family - never found a virus on their PCs, just screwed up program installs/windows bloat. Nuke & pave always fixes it.

Really, if you don't click stupid links or open dubious attachments, you're not going to get a virus. Don't just click 'OK' on everything. Read the box if it wants to install some crappy toolbar or whatever, if you get a pop-up that won't close, ctrl-alt-esc, then kill the browser process.

Avast

+1 on Avast

What about PC Matic? I've been curious about them.

I use the free versions of Avast, Ccleaner& malware bytes. Never had a problem.

Go to ninite.com, download and run what you wanna try then remove.

Thanks. I don't go to any dubious sites really, the forum, drudge, amazon and my school website are probably 90% of my surfing. If doing a paper i may have to use academic sites and such.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
What about PC Matic? I've been curious about them.

Scam.

BUY Malwarebytes or use the free version with it's limitations.
C'mon does everything has to be free?
Besides there has been a Bazillion threads on this already.

AVG free since 1999, always kept up to date, zero infections

The Microsoft anti-virus software that comes installed with the operating system is better than any free software and probably also anything you pay for.

I use Windows Defender and a paid upgrade of Malwarebytes. Not one problem or annoyance.

These are all for Windows, correct? What about something for the Mac? I am very careful about what I download, but I missed something when I downloaded the latest version of Flash Player. I am bombarded with tabs opening up and sending me to places like Norton.

I did uninstall and reinstall Chrome. It affects Safari also, but it does not contaminate Firefox.

I have been using Avast for years and it has never let me down.

For Windows 7 and above, what Microsoft provides is more than adequate. Most unwanted intrusions occur as a result of things we've downloaded, not just surfing around. Defender seems to take care of all our machines; they were all ugraded from 7.

360 Total Security. I used Avast for several years and then started having issues with it (not viruses). No issues since switching to 360.

quote:

Originally posted by prairieviper:
I have been using Avast for years and it has never let me down.

Same here. And with Yahoo breach of security, the spam and email virus continue to flow.