Hello Shelly,
Real-time protection
Avast 7 Free is a good security product, however it's important to understand how most attacks work so you'll be able to avoid them because no security product can protect you from yourself.
If you practice a smart online behavior then you should really decrees your chances of getting infected. You can read some tips on how to avoid infections here: http://malwaretips.com/Thread-5-easy-tips-to-avoid-infections
Browser protection
Internet Explorer is a very target browser by the cyber criminals so my suggestion here would be to use either Firefox or Google Chrome because both are very often updated and have very strong protection layers.
My option here would be Google Chrome, mainly because it uses sandboxes to protect your sessions.
I would suggest also that you add the following addons to your browser:
Web of trust - site advisor,which can help you a lot when you're browsing the Internet.
Long story short...If it's red or yellow just avoid that website...
WOT (Free) -
link
To help you avoid malicious sites you can use Web of Trust (WOT) a website rating browser plugin. After you add it to your browser make sure you only visit websites rated "Green" by WOT
Adblocker - an adblocker
For Firefox
Adblock Plus (Free) -
link
Adblock is a content-filtering extension for Mozilla Firefox- and Mozilla Application Suite-based web browsers. Adblock allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed.
For Chrome
Adblock Plus for Google Chrome (Free) -
link
Adblock Plus for Google Chrome is a content-filtering extension for Google Chrome. Adblock allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed.
On demand scanners
You should
always upload all your downloads on virustotal.com and perform a scan with your on-demand to be checked for malware!
VTUploader (Free) -
link
To upload a file to VirusTotal, you can visit the main analysis site, click the Browse button to select a file from your hard drive, and then click the Send file button. You can make this process even easier with the free VirusTotal Uploader utility. After installing it, you can simply right-click any file under 20MB and choose "VirusTotal" from the Send To Windows menu. The scan results will display in your browser as usual.
Hitman Pro (Trial ) -
link
An on-demand scanner using multiple anti-malware engines and cloud technology. It offers unlimited free scanning but once you use it to remove detected malware it switches to a 30-day trial version. I recommend using it after you've scanned your hard-drive with the other products you have installed
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free (Free)-
link
This product utilizes Malwarebytes powerful technology to detect and remove all traces of malware including worms, trojans, rootkits, rogues, dialers, spyware and more.
Virtualization:
Even if you submitted a file to virustotal.com and it said that it's clean , you'll need to run it in virtual environment because sometimes infection can be so new that security vendors don't have signs for it.
Virtualization software will allow you to browse the web or run another application in a completely safe environment. This is especially useful when visiting high-risk web sites, whether accidentally or deliberately, as the Web browser will be completely contained within the virtual enviroment, preventing any damage to your computer.
A sandbox can also be used to run any other applications which you think may be suspect - you can run the program inside the sandbox to determine whether or not it is safe while remaining completely protected against any malicious actions that it may try to carry out.
I strongly advise you to install Sandboxie and use it for when you're browsing the Internet or running shady/unknown programs.
Alternately you can try
BufferZone PRO (Free) , another great virtualization software.
Sandboxie (Free/Paid) -
link
Sandboxie runs your programs in an isolated space which prevents them from making permanent changes to other programs and data in your computer.
Always run suspicious of freshly downloaded files in a Sandboxie to verify that he download isn't compromised!Sandboxie will replicate perfectly your operating system so all the files should run without any problems in it.
- but we have had at least 3 very nasty viruses in the last year and a half or so. My husband had solicited advice from his cousin and an independent IT guy he knows and that's how we ended up with one of the viruses :-/ We have not paid for anti-virus, etc in the past but not opposed to it if its necessary to protect our computer. Oh and my husband does alot of searching the internet for pics of airplanes (he's a model builder) and therefore doesn't always know the sites he's accessing from Google search. So, thanks in advance for any help and advice you can offer!
