Firefox has anti-virus. Does anyone know if it is good enough to not need other anti-virus software? One of my computers is being a pain (so what else is new) and I think the problem may be conflicts with various security stuff. I would like to get rid of somethings if I am duplicating protections. Ideas?

Ginger,don't you just hate computers?

I very much doubt that Firefox a/v would be enough.

It's a lawless world on the internet. If your PC is like a house; then there are people trying all sorts of ways to get in and do stuff.
Some try your front door; others go round the back; some try to get in the windows; some pose as a meter reader and make a copy of any key they see lying around; some claim to be the police and want to come in and get a criminal out of your house, some wander in among your friends while you are having a party; some get in because your kids forget to shut the door. Some send you "gifts" of their "new improved" locks to try out. Others claim to be your gardeners or cleaners.

Some are just nosey and want to poke around. Others want to take your cash and credit cards. Some want to trash your place. Some copy your signature and claim to be you at your bank when they get back out.

So if you get a new window in your house that comes with its own lock, then that is not enough to keep your place safe. The window might need a stronger lock, but sometimes you can't fit both locks on the same window.

Now, getting back to the virtual world, you will need more than one method of protection. You will need virus scanning, email scanning, trojan detection, and root kit protection.

It sounds scary, but it is well to be warned. I tried to clean up my builder's PC, and even though I removed 3000 viruses I could not get rid of something that kept taking it over, slowing it down, and starting IE with its own homepage. I eventually reinstalled the whole system and put on Kapersky, which is providing a free trial until 7 Feb.
Some protection software won't work with others. You can't run Norton and Kapersky at the same time; but you can run AdAware.

quote:

Firefox has anti-virus.

I am not sure what you mean by this, Jane. Firefox is advertised to be less prone to virus attacks than Internet Explorer--for a variety of reasons--but I am not aware that it has specific anti-virus software built in to the browser itself.

Firefox, like all browsers, has pop-up window blockers, but no "antivirus" protection. Viruses and trojan horses can get into your computer many ways: through web site cookies, in emails, downloaded files, etc. etc. Firefox has no way to control all the activities you perform on your computer.

If you use a Windows computer, you must install professionally written (MacAfee, Norton, something like that) antiviral software. If you've used your windows computer for any length of time without antiviral software, chances are good it's been infected and even the AV stuff, run from a CD, might not be able to clean it. (See John's post above.)

On the other hand, if you have a Mac, your ISP has a firewall, and you never open files from unknown sources, you probably don't need AV software.

Edited to add: Whoops! I forgot about roaming, which I never do. See Roz's post on getting email somewhere other than through your home connection! Even a Mac can be hacked if roaming!

Jim, I think you are right--now that I think!
Which is probably why I could not find the answer.

John, thanks for the time you took to answer my question. Clearly you know of what you speak. So--what do you think of Spydoctor and Desktop Mechanic recommended by PC World?

I do not like Norton. I have been using the AOL security stuff but am pretty sure that it has intefered with performance so got rid of it.

I use the NoScript Firefox add-on. If I do not allow script from a site,does that protect from viruses? As you can tell, I do not understand all of this as well as I should so appreciate help.

Presuming you are running Windows of some flavour,then I would recommend the free version of AVG from Here.

It is regularly updated, and has worked fine for me for a couple of years. Until this year I used Norton on one PC, AVG on another, and the performance was comparable except that AVG did not slow my Pc to the speed of treacle like Norton.

In a recent technical review, AVG outscored both Norton and Mcafee in detection rates, although the best was Kaspersky which is reasonably priced compared two the main commercial rivals.

TimW

quote:

did not slow my Pc to the speed of treacle like Norton.

Exactly!!

Your computer may be slow, and Nortons, which is becoming bloatware, may be slowing it down, but if it is really slow then I would look for another culprit.

I used to use Norton, but it is incompatible with other software, so where I install Norton Systemworks I do not install the virus protection component. I still like Norton Ghost to do system backups. It has been reliable for doing system restores, and I have a tool which allows me to boot it from a CD.

I have been running Kapersky for a few months on some PCs and I like it as it is a comprehensive integrated suite that works with Outlook and Outlook express to learn what is spam and what isn't in the eMail you receive. It is not too expensive and simpler to run than setting up a suite of free applications.

On the free route I like AVG 7.5, ZoneAlarm for a firewall, Spybot, Lavasoft Ad-aware.

I do not know Desktop mechanic or Spydoctor except by hearsay. Viruses, their detection. prevention and removal are changing all the time.

One of the best preventative measures is not to run your computer with administrative privileges. At home I have a limited account for each of us, and I only use the administrator account for installing software. This prevents many websites from installing softare surreptitiously. I have just fixed a friends computer that she was running happily for a few years until her nephews visitedand did some browsing. A limited guest account would have probably prevented some malicious web sites from installing a trojan. Of course, this is a little more complicated to set up, so MS generally defaults to letting everyone being an administrator; and as their computer gets infected over time and slows down some people think that their computer is just getting old and that they need a new one.

quote:

One of the best preventative measures is not to run your computer with administrative privileges. At home I have a limited account for each of us, and I only use the administrator account for installing software. This prevents many websites from installing softare surreptitiously.

John, that sounds like a good idea especially since grandson now uses the computer. I just ran the AVG virus check and came up clean. I am not sure why I am running slow as Spyware says it's good. It may be there is just too much on here but I do have 18 free gb.

I do not use outlook or outlook express--do not even have them active.

Thanks for your help and thanks Tim for sending me to AVG.

Jane,

Slowness will not be caused by a lack of hard disk space (unless you get down to less than 1Gb). Speed mostly depends on your CPU speed, the amount of memory, and how many and which processes you are running. Lots of applications you install want to put an icon in the taskbar and run a background process whenever you start Windows. These can use up lots of process power. And some can go faulty and use up a lot of power without doing anything.

So you might have a Porsche, but you are pulling a fully loaded semi-trailer.

Aside.(Do you know the joke about the man that wanted his Porch painted?)

Yes, Grandsons know lots of clever tricks with matches and fire, but they don't know what else is flammable or how to call the fire brigade - Hey isn't that an old UK English expression! I don't even know if they use it in England now.

Ok--I am going to get rid of lots of stuff on the task bar and see if that helps. I also recently installed a new wireless router but I can't imagine that would make things run slow as it is supposed to be faster than the one I had.

I'll let you know what happens when I stream line the task bar.

No--what happened when the man wanted his porch painted?

I've posted it as my 1200th post joke.

John, that isn't a joke--it brings tears!

I guess most of us have individual preferences for antivirus etc software but I am aware that some certainly slow down your computer, I have also found the online free software such as adaware, spybot etc only have limited protection from spyware which will also slow down your computer.

I now use CA Internet Security Suite which i have found excellent particularly in the spyware area.

Hi Monty,

I am not an expert but I have more experience than the average user.

Yes, the free software are not as effective as the more commercial software as a general rule. Some of the people I know do not yet think they should pay for security so I keep aware of what is happening in freeware.

I started in the 1990s with Norton, changed to Trend Micro PCcillin, and am now on Kapersky. But I think one of my best moves was to insert a hardware router/firewall/NAT when I set up a home network. For a while the hardware router and running under limited priveges seem to keep my computer clean. I don't think that is enough these days.

I am glad to hear another recommendation for the CA suite. If I get an opportunity I will look at it.

From this thread I gather that Firefox has proven to be a successful ST browser for at least some of you.

I love Firefox for the most part, and I'm pretty sure that when I first switched over it worked fine with ST. Now, although I can read ST posts and other pages, the Reply, Notify, Tools, Find &c. options are not shown as links and nothing happens when I click on them. If I go to the site on IE (where I am now), there's no problem.

The only other site that looks odd for me with FF is NYTimes, which I have set as my homepage, but it still does what I ask it to except when browser pages are unaccountably "stopped" and I have to start over again.

Does anyone know if there is some setting I may have changed by mistake?

I use BitDefender anti-virus, but don't think I have changed anything there recently, and it does not detect any viruses or adware when I run a scan...

One possibility is that the browser software has become corrupted...you could uninstall it and install a fresh copy to see if that makes a difference.

It is also possible that you inadvertently changed a setting that made the browser behave differently. Reinstalling would solve that problem also...

Thanks, Jim! Why didn't I think of that?!

Hmmm I was sure that would fix it, but I uninstalled Firefox as suggested and downloaded a fresh copy, and everything is exactly the same. Oh well, it isn't that much trouble to open an IE page. I was just surprised that others were able to access the site normally with Firefox. I'll look into the BitDefender settings again.

Dorothy,

I found a link about Uninstalling Firefox.

It seems worth a try.

Interesting article, John - I learned a lot about Firefox. I will try following the directions,too. Thanks very much for pointing it out.

I am not anti paying for software - I have several "shareware" packages that I was quite happy to pay or donate for the full version. I try and read a few technical magazines to keep up to date with things.

What surprised me was how badly relatively expensive software like Mcafee and Norton did in terms of virus detection. As I posted earlier, I used to be a fan of