Need recommendations for best antivirus software for online gamers

[MorganaRue]

First of all I want to thank you all for the help. There is a lot of information here and I intend to go through all of it in detail. (It will take me a bit of time because I don't understand all of it but I get the gist of most of it.) When I reach a point with a specific question is there a way to tag someone to get a more detailed explanation? Something more in layman's terms? Please understand that while I know the basics I have very little knowledge of terminology and what affects what. For example, I get that sandboxie is a program to download but am I correct in understanding that it sets up a sort of virtual arena to run programs in? Does this mean that it's like opening up a program inside of a box with no windows or doors and allows nothing to escape? And if so, are the instructions on how to run it easy to understand? And can my daughter do her online gaming INSIDE of sandboxie? Or am I missing the point entirely? I am sorry to sound like such a noob, but in reality I am. :-(

Thanks again everyone!

 

[BoraMurdar]

First of all I want to thank you all for the help. There is a lot of information here and I intend to go through all of it in detail. (It will take me a bit of time because I don't understand all of it but I get the gist of most of it.) When I reach a point with a specific question is there a way to tag someone to get a more detailed explanation? Something more in layman's terms? Please understand that while I know the basics I have very little knowledge of terminology and what affects what. For example, I get that sandboxie is a program to download but am I correct in understanding that it sets up a sort of virtual arena to run programs in? Does this mean that it's like opening up a program inside of a box with no windows or doors and allows nothing to escape? And if so, are the instructions on how to run it easy to understand? And can my daughter do her online gaming INSIDE of sandboxie? Or am I missing the point entirely? I am sorry to sound like such a noob, but in reality I am. :-(

Thanks again everyone!

You can quote the specific reply in order to get the right answer from that person. Also, you can multi-quote several messages that you want to. Also, you can tag someone to bring a notification to that member, by adding @ in front of members name. For example @MorganaRue

And yes, Sandboxie is a program that creates virtual environment where you can put specific program into. So everything that happens inside of Sandbox is restricted to the rest of the Operating System.

 

[Soulbound]

@MorganaRue To tag someone just write @ and the person's name.

Not sure what gaming your daughter does but considering you listed minecraft, I will assume minecraft and some other online games. If the online games contain an anti-hacking software built in, you can forget about running it inside Sandboxie without putting much work on it. Minecraft I cannot fully tell you if it works or not because my son does his minecraft gaming on the Xbox.

In short, Sandboxie is like a box, where you run/"install" things in that box and it remains contained there, without messing up anything outside that box. It is similar to a Virtual Machine concept, but difference is that it is running in your Operating System and not like VMware and VirtualBox where you have to install a new Operating System.

There are a lot of users of Sandboxie in this forum, so I am sure others will be able to explain in detail and in easy terms its functions.

Hope this helped.

Edit: You could view this video for some understanding on Sandboxie. Video

 

[MorganaRue]

You should make sure UAC is enabled.You can go here on how to find it and check http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-are-user-account-control-settings#1TC=windows-7
You could use Malwarebytes Premium as an on demand scanner and also add one or two more such as Hitman Pro,Herd Protect & Emsisoft Emergency Kit
ADW Cleaner is a removal tool for PUPs ,Hijackers ( browser),toolbars ,adware.A nice tool to have the ones mentioned are on demand scanners that you can add to check your PC also
Some type of back up solution if you dont already have one
You could add AdBlock Plus to FF
CCleaner also if not already installed
You could go with Avast AV Free if you are not happy with McAfee and in the meantime look around the site and get a feel for what others like to use,paid & free

Thanks for the info. I went into my user account settings and set it to "Always notify". It took me a moment to figure it out but I found some helpful info from the link you posted. Thank you!

We do use Adblock Plus and we almost exclusively use Chrome. (I only use Firefox for one site I visit that doesn't work with Chrome) The Malwarebytes premium runs in real time and has already helped us out since I posted this message. I use the AdwCleaner on demand but have explained to my daughter she needs to run it daily. In addition to those I should also use CCleaner? I've heard of Avast AV and was wondering how it stacked up against the others. Price really isn't an issue and so far I haven't had any real problems with McAfee other than it just hogging a lot of space. So instead of installing AVAST AV Free and using it temporarily is it okay just to keep using McAfee until I make a final decision on an AV program? (Price really isn't an issue as I'd rather pay more for a better program now instead of having to replace her whole computer later)

 

[tonibalas]

I agree with the suggestions made by the members for security software but i have another suggestion to make.
Since your daughter is online for many hours and gets infected frequently i suggest to install LastPass to secure your passwords in case you are infected with an information stealer malware because LastPass encrypts your passwords and no one can see them except you.
Forgot to mention that LastPass is an addon and it can be installed in any browser and it's free.
I hope i have helped

 

[Jaspion]

How to use VirusTotal

1. Head to www.virustotal.com:

2. Click "Choose File", browse to the suspicious file, and select it for scanning:

3. Click "Scan it!". Let's see what results I got for my highly suspicious file:

From the looks of it, it's bad, really bad. So VirusTotal has 56 antivirus engines at the moment, 53 of which are saying this is malware. Now I have two options, to reanalyse the file, or to view the last analysis, and since this was today, I'll see the last analysis.

5. Identify potential malware:

As you can see, this was just the Eicar file, which is designed to test antiviruses. It's just a harmless file that is identified as malware by the industry just so you can check the AV without actually having to download a virus file.

Here you have an almost 100% level of certainty, but it won't always be like this. Sometimes a real bad virus will have only one or two engines detecting it, and sometimes it's fully undetected. So for really new files, it's best to wait for a couple of days and see the new results before running them.

You can do basically the same with internet addresses, by clicking the URL tab:

But it's the same story, a new malware site or file is still relatively unknown by the AV industry. But an old one that all companies know usually has not been used in a long time. So usually you will encounter new threats, and even VirusTotal isn't enough sometimes.

So I reiterate my point, go on learning (I must say you seem to have an excellent grasp for a beginner), and teaching her. Especially it is important to identify threats from social sites, to understand that many messages sent by friends are actually messages sent by viruses which infected their device(s), to understand that some sites can be trusted almost 100% while others may seem interesting but must be avoided for their dangers. I know it seems overwhelming, but, again, you are doing well for a beginner from what I can see. And I assure you it will be far less overwhelming than you think, and infinitely less so than losing your precious data and piece of mind.

 

[MorganaRue]

I should have been more specific when I mentioned gaming. Specifically, my daughter plays Minecraft and League of Legends, and Garry's Mod. (Plus a couple others I can't think of) She plays on a couple of different servers for Minecraft. I personally play Skyrim and a couple of other games from time to time (free) on Steam and Diablo II and Diablo III. I don't play PVP in my games but my daughter is almost always doing PVP. She also uses Twitter a lot and something called ask.fm. Don't know if this will make a difference in recommendations but I thought I should include it to be safe.

 

[Exterminator]

For most users I would recommend ESET.You can use ESET Nod32 Antivirus combined with Windows Firewall or ESET Smart Security which is a full Security Suite(AV + Firewall) . Eset Smart Security is very good and would be fine for you on default settings. If you would like to try something sometime send me a PM and I will see what I can do for you Seems like your on top of things right now so welcome to MT enjoy

 

[the unknwn]

its avast or eset you choose bro both good and light on system