I've been using the free Avast for years but now I need to upgrade to a paid version of something. Without getting too much into the weeds, it's all about identity theft issues regarding tax preparers and their clients. Several seminars I've recently been to talked about this a lot and just now I read an article about the future of CPA firms and it said a big emphasis will be advising clients about ID theft protection and their internal computer security. If we're putting out that kind of advice, I better have my stuff in order.

I'm reading about how some programs like Bitdefender include several good addons that others charge extra for like password managers, secure payment browsers and other things I don't know if I should care about or not. I work at a fairly large CPA firm but that's not what I'm asking about. I also have my own private clients I work with at home and it's my home system I'm looking to protect.

Bob

What does your company use? I'd consider that as a starting point.

Many times, an infection is self inflicted. If it's a business machine, keep off the social sites with it. Of course, you do have clients mostly emailing and sending attachments so you need something that is strong in that area.

My business computer and my studio machine are kept off the net except when absolutely needed.

This one I'm on now is a multi-function machine. I keep my company records and billing on it and use it for limited internet access. I use Windows Security Essentials, Malware bytes, and common sense. I'm not tempted to click on things I see. That's the biggest problem people have.

I read something from one of the security experts on his site. He stated that most if not all infections come from people clicking on things they shouldn't.

Also, get a service such as Carbonite which is an automatic, in the background backup service. When you change a file, it backs you up. If you ever get hit with a bad virus or a cryptolocker, you can simply buy a new computer and reload all your saved data. It also is a life saver when.... not if.... but WHEN, your computer dies. I had a serious computer failure.... I turned it on one morning and it refused to boot. I tried everything I could to get it to boot. Safe mode didn't even work. I went to the store, bought a new computer, reloaded the basic Carbonite software, logged in and literally in a few hours of downloading, my system and business files were all up and running like nothing ever happened.

That's my advice.

This is the non-commercial, non sponsored site that my computer guy recommends:

https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/

or

https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-10/

You can click your version of Windows and read the tests. What works best for Win 7 may not be best for Win 10 (and so on).

Insights and incites by Notes

At the office we use an offsite IT firm that handles all that. We have a secure server with a hardware firewall, hot swappable HD's for backup and a bunch of other stuff and they monitor it all. I don't have anything to do with any of that but I remember that the Dell server alone cost around 9K a couple of years ago when we finally had to upgrade to Win 7 enterprise.

I'm pretty savvy with all your suggestions Herb and I've been thinking of setting up a second system just for my business clients. Something else I've read about is using a second system as a hardware firewall, maybe that could be better than simply using a second system for business? The idea there is the firewall protects the main computer.

That's a good website Notes, thanks.

Bob

If you are running Malwarebytes version 2, you should upgrade to 3. Runs much faster.

I've been running Avast free version for a long time. I've had zero issues up until last week. I attempted to record audio from a YouTube video with Audacity. The video played just fine several times and I rewinded part way by dragging the seeker back successfully several times. When I attempted to record it with Audacity the video would lock up as if the internet connection suddenly got slow. Inside the YouTube screen displayed an endless rotating circle and the words "if problem does not resolve restart your device". After several attempts I cleared cookies, restarted, tried it again. Same thing. Played fine. But, once I had Audacity open and ready to record it stalled and same message. Then I tried to play a regular mp3 that is saved on my computer via Windows Media Player and it would not play at all even when I was off line. Cleared, restarted and Windows Media Player works again.
The symptoms duplicated the next day.

Avast free will only do a quick scan. It pretends to do a full scan but the % timer always stays at Zero %.
Thinking Avast misse something, although I don't click on things that I don't trust, I was going to install MalwareBytes and attempt a full scan with that but I'm skeptical about trusting the download due to reading about hackers creating a pseudo Malwarebytes that downloads a virus.

So, can one of you post a good MalwareBytes link here or in a Private Message for me.

Or, do you have any other suggestions? All else seems to work fine but I have not done a full scan of any type for maybe a year or so.

I always DL from the original programmer's site, is this case:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/

You also might want to try these:

http://adwcleaner-download.com/

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/rkill.html

Run in this order: rkill, adwcleaner, your anti-virus then anti-malwarebytes. I have cleaned many computers using this procedure.

You also might want to try this:

http://securitytango.com/

Nick is from our area and the site is still current.

As usual with these type of programs proceed at you own risk. I would suggest making an image backup prior to doing any of the above.

Okay, I ran Avast Free full scan again. What happens is the big screen shows scan in progress but stuck zero percent. I minimized the screen and the smaller screen popped up in the bottom right corner indicating 48% complete. Reopened large screen refreshed it to 48% also. Periodic minimizing and reopening of large screen updates the progress while the small scan monitor seems to show actual progress.
Avast found one think from omnitech PC Diagnosis that came pre-installed when the computer was new in 2012. Apparentlt this company used to contract as tech service for microsoft. After contract expired they cloaked themselves as microsoft tech support even putting chat link pop-ups in front of pseudo microsoft help sites. They were sued by microsoft.
Anyway, I would have had to click on the PC Diagnistics exe file while on line to give them access which I never did. The file had not been touched, as far as I know, since the computer was new.
After research I decided the best action was to remove PC Diagnostics via Add/Remove Programs.
Malwarebytes found 24 potentially unwanted programs which as far as I can tell were all related to Ask toolbar which I do not and never had. A little late night reading about it and I decided to quarantine all 24.

I wonder if my stubborn refusal to upgrade from W 8.1 to W 10 leaves me a bit vulnerable due to any microsoft lack of focus on 8.1 PC users.

I think it could Tobias. Every new iteration of Windows had more robust stuff going on. I've read quite a bit about that and the experts say that's true.

It was Avast that stopped me for half a day from installing the free upgrade to Win 10. I had it disabled but that wasn't good enough. I had to remove it then everything went fine.

Since then I've had zero issues with Win 10. I had no trouble figuring it out, it baffles me when some post then can't do this or that with it. From the way you post you seen pretty good with computers. Trust me, its fine, you'll have no problems.

Bob

Update; since full scan of Avast Free and Malwarebytes Free 3 - 4 days ago and the actions take in previous post my computer is super fast at everything.
Thanks to all who gave recommendations.

An update. Two days ago I had a chance to talk to our offsite IT person who handles our network. If anybody wants to know, this is who they are:

http://vanishingclouds.com/

I explained what I'm doing at home and asked him what he thought about the different AV suites.

He said none of them because they're all after-the-fact security meaning new crap comes out all the time and they can't stop it until it's been discovered and they come up with a fix for it. Then he rattled on about browser extensions and a bunch of stuff that made my eyes glaze over.

He asked what OS I'm using and I said Win 10 Pro. He said great, if I was using 7, 8 or even 10 Home he would tell me to upgrade to 10 Pro because Win 10 is far better at security than those are. He also said I should start using Edge exclusively for web browsing for the same reason.

He knows all about IE, FF and Chrome but he's focused on enterprise security and says that's what Microsoft specializes in. For security Edge is better. He's not concerned with download speeds, convenience or different features, just security.

He said to forget all the commercial AV software and go with whitelisting. Sounds complicated but he said it's not that difficult once it's set up. Easy for him to say...He's going to send me some instructions for it and I'll post more on this later.

Whadday'all think?

Bob

What is "Edge"? Is it a browser like Internet Explorer? Will it work with Wind Doze 8.1 ?

It's the new browser with Win 10. It still uses the big blue E like IE does but it's called Edge and I think it's 10 only.

Bob

I've used Edge and it's fast and solid, a good improvement from Internet Explorer. After what was written here, I may go with that over Firefox. Yes, send the info about whitelisting. Thanks.

I haven't forgotten about you Matt. I've been in touch with VCI almost every day with different issues in the office (now it's one of the networked printers) and I keep mentioning my question and he keeps saying "I know, sorry been very busy but I'll get it to you soon".

Bob