Good Spyware/Trojan blocker?

[Jelenedra]

After getting the same bug I had a few months ago (husband is in trouble for going back to that wrestling site) I decided we need some new protection for our PC.

Suggestions? Cheap as Free is preferrable, as we are so broke that we still haven't taken our pc in to get reformatted the LAST time we got the nasty nasty. (For those of you who don't pay attention to my lil soap opera... we're missing a vias thingy so I can't reinstall/reformat ourselves)

So, obviously we have a hole in our protection services. Currently using MicroTrend's PCillian 2005 antivirus/firewall/spyware all in one. Help please?

[Tamha]

For a good free spyware remover, I recommend Ad-Aware SE:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

It won't do anything for virus problems, though, if your PC-cillan misses something like that.

[Kala]

Links and info I found elsewhere

Spyware Blaster
Prevents spyware from being installed

Spyware Guard
Realtime protection against spyware

Adaware
Ad-Aware Personal provides advanced protection from known data-mining, aggressive advertising, Trojans, dialers, malware, browser hijackers, and tracking components. This software is downloadable free of charge

Remember to tell the Mr. that Dave Scherer don't care if his pop ups mess up your computer, so stop going to his site.

[mistymage]

I have several freebies on my pc and I pay for Norton (never had any trouble with it).. here's a few that I have:

http://www.emsisoft.com/en/ asquared Trojans, Worms, Keyloggers, Dialer and  Spyware/Adware
http://www.spybot.info/ removes spyware
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/  spywareblaster
ad aware SE (listed above)

~misty

[Jelenedra]

Thanks, that adaware thing sounds like something I need. =p

Yeah, the mister is banned from video websites other than youtube.

[Hegelian]

For best results, use both Ad-Awarre and Spybot, as sometimes one will find stuff the other misses.

AVG Free from Grisoft is probably as good an anti-virus app as any, and it's free.

The best protection against crap on your computer is to pay attention to where you go on the Web, don't click on boxes that say "click here to get rid of viruses on your PC," and sit behind a hardware firewall, such as is incorporated into most routers these days.

Also, use Firefox or Opera instead of Internet Explorer, and use Thunderbird or Eudora instead of Outlook or Outlook Express for email. Just say no to ActiveX controls.   

[Ambular]

I also recommend Spybot S&S, Ad-Aware and Spyware Blaster.  I use all three, and also these free programs:

Blacklight Defender (rootkit scanner:) https://europe.f-secure.com/blacklight/try.shtml  It's a little annoying because you have to download a new version every month or two, but no free general purpose anti-spyware program that I know of will catch rootkits.

Avast Antivirus:  http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

Edit: Also agreed that using an alternative browser and e-mail client is an excellent idea.  If you go with FireFox, the extension NoScript (which allows you to build a whitelist of which sites you want to be able to run javascript, Flash and the like) is a valuable security addition to the browser.

[starrling]

I'll second the Avast usage - my son and I both use it.  Also, Yahoo has an ant-spy built into their toolbar.  Works pretty well so far (knock on wood).

[dizzy]

Any time I reinstall Windows I always make sure to go to the hardware and disable the ethernet driver. That fixes my spyware problem. 

[Nec]

Any time I reinstall Windows I always make sure to go to the hardware and disable the ethernet driver. That fixes my spyware problem. 

lol! I actually just reinstalled my firewall after many months of not having anything (and not getting anything). I know having a router with a firewall -most if not all have them - helps a lot.

I use BlackIce PC Protection only - most other firewalls suck in my opinion, and use a lot of system resources. So far, the hackers I know have not been able to get on my pc when I have asked them to try. This one is barely noticeable, but can be a bit of a challenge to set up for certain things.

I also run the free scanners at F_Secure and Trend-Micro from time to time.

Also, Kaspersky products are really good, but the anti-virus can lag other programs. Anti-hack is quite good, however.