Worried about PC security. Please help.

[Jack Bando]

Hello, after reading posts about people being hacked on FTP, or UB, I'm worried.

I have the following programs.
---
Avast antivirus
AVG antivirus
Bitdefender antivirus
Windows Defender
Ad Aware
Spybot S&D
Spyware Blaster
Spyware Guard
Process Guard
Hardware Router
Zone Alarm Firewall
Hijack This
SnoopFree


Am I missing anything important. I'm paranoid that I might have some virus (no signs) that is undetectable and I'm doomed.

Thanks for reading, and helping.

[goldtoes]

Just be smart you and is hard to get infected. You should NOT, however, use more than one active-memory antivirus.

[Jack Bando]

What do you mean by active-memory(Both sitting in the bar by the system time)? And why?

[Meech]

Wow dude. Overkill. Bigtime.

He means that you should not have more than 1 antivirus program in "autoprotect" type mode. They will potentially conflict with each other.

[Jack Bando]

[ QUOTE ]
Wow dude. Overkill. Bigtime.

He means that you should not have morethan 1 antivirus program in "autoprotect" type mode. They will potentially conflict with each other.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, makes sense now. Don't do that anyways.

Which programs do you think are overkill Meech? I could see tossing out SG and SB.

[Meech]

I'm not familiar with all of 'em, but from what I've seen most of the anti-spyware crap is either spyware itself or junk.

Common sense will get you almost 80% there.

Why so many antivirus proggies? You download crap that tends to be infected or something?

[kyleb]

Uhhhhh that's a lot of AntiVirus programs. Just run one of them. Any of them is fine. Here's what I use:

AntiVir (on my Windows 2k3 Server PC) or AVG Anti-Virus (personal PC)
Sygate Personal Firewall
SnoopFree
ProcessGuard
and common sense when downloading stuff

That's about all you need to know. An 8+ character password with numbers and letters alternated goes a very long way as well.

[kyleb]

I also used Windows Defender but am switching back to Lavasoft's AdAware.

[Freakin]

windows defender has gotten pretty unreliable w/ decent updates

[psionic storm]

Yes, try an intrusion detection system.

also, most of the software you listed is useless against decent rootkits. you might also want to setup a gateway and sniff traffic from there if you think something is fishy.

i dont believe securing a machine is as simple as intalling a few programs.

goodluck