Tutorials - Free anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall for your home PC.
We all know that we should protect our PC's from nefarious activity before we go online, I'm sure. However this can seem prohibitively expensive and difficult for a home PC. While your business or work may pay for antivirus and so on for your work PC, that may not be so for your home one, fortunately there are some perfectly good alternatives for your home PC that are free for personal use. You ought to have all three types of software installed, just in case.
They can all be upgraded to paid-for versions if you need software support etc. for your home system.
These links are correct at the time of writing, if you find them to be out of date, please let us know, and then try putting the name of the software into Google to find the latest version.
Firstly, Antivirus:
- Grisoft AVG - http://free.grisoft.com/
- avast! 4 Home Edition - http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
Secondly, Firewall:
You can of course enable the windows firewall in modern versions of it, but if you can't, or do not wish to...
- ZoneAlarm Firewall - http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-us/anti-virus-spyware-free-download.htm
Thirdly, Anti-spyware:
- Lavasoft Adaware Free - http://www.lavasoft.com/software/adaware/
A final point is that a lot of PC's purchased for home use come with limited trials of Norton Antivirus and related programs which can (for reasons best known to others) sometimes be difficult to fully remove and replace with a free-for-home-use alternative. In such situations we recommend you download the "Norton Removal Tool" to do it for you, from the following web page.
We don't guarantee that these products will work for everyone in all circumstances, we merely suggest using them as they are free, and some protection is infinitely better than none. If you are in a situation where they do not clear it up, you almost certainly need an expert, for which we recommend you consult a member of the Association Of Independent Computer Specialists of which we are a member, and other members are more specialised in this area.