I recently bought a new laptop because Microsoft withdrew their support for Windows XP.

As part of the online package I purchased McAfee LiveSafe for an additional £79.99. Amongst other things the package it came with boasted the following.

' Mcafee LiveSafe service protects YOU-your identity, your data, and ALL your devices. Now you can surf, shop, bank, share and live your life online with confidence '. .....Keep that quote in mind.

I have had nothing but trouble trying to install LiveSafe from the off, and numerous phone calls and e-mails went back and forth. 2 months after installing it I had a virus on my new laptop. I notified McAfee immediately.

I received an e-mail back to my e-mail address, but it was directed at a completely different person, giving her full name and mobile phone number. That is a shocking breach of data protection. I have of course reported this to Mcafee, and await their investigation.

Wow, that is VERY BAD.

Interestingly, I keep on and keep on going back to my old XP laptop to get things done. I think I'll keep it forever. Even if I never went on the net with it, it's so much better for so many of the things I need to do than my Windows 7 laptop which drives me up the wall.

Moley, I'm in the IT business and we wouldn't touch McAfee with a bargepole.

There are 3 main contenders IMO:

Kaspersky
Norton
Bitdefender

Yes the others do get good reports, occasionally, but the bigger and better the company the more resources they put into the job at hand.

I use Kaspersky Internet Security 2014

_________________
Lets be careful out there !

Ditto.

I use Bitdefefender and buy an annual license on ebay.

About £14.00 for the bits I use. (not the safe banking bit) Virus and Malware protection only.

Banking passwords are in my head only all others are in keepass security (free) and I keep the database backed on an separate server.

Thanks for the replies all.

I am so b****y annoyed with myself for being sucked in to buying the McAfee product in the first place.

Reminder to self: Don't shop online when under the influence of medication. Had I been able to get to the store there is no way I would have added that to my basket, then again I probably wouldn't have bought the laptop I did either.

In the past I have always used free software on my devices. AVG has always worked well on my mobile phone and Microsoft Security Essentials has been perfect on my old laptop. Both are highly rated by Which Magazine.

I clearly wasn't thinking straight at the time. A costly mistake and expensive lesson learned.

I decided in recent times to buy an Apple Macbook Air and I can't get over how fast it is, and I'm not on super-fast broadband. Nor, so I'm told, does it need any of the security products such as Norton, McFee, etc.
I've still got my old HP laptop on which I used AVG.

I resurrected an old atom netbook I found at the back of a cupboard the other week. It has Win 7 starter on which I wiped and installed lubuntu.

The machine was always slow with the win7 but fly's like Concorde now with the lubuntu. It is an open source o/s and as such is free. Software like thunderbird, skype and firefox just to name a few will run on it. Most stuff available for windows has a linux alternative.

Little bit of a learning curve as a lot if it is terminal based but it is as good as if not better than windoze or apple products.

When I bought my Apple I was told I didn't need any security products - is this true or am I living in a fools paradise? Any techies out there know?

Never ever believe what a salesman tells you. Particularly those in Curry's/PC World..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/a ... -Macs.html



Draw your own conclusions.

All operating system types are at risk of some nastyness. Virus and malware are just code the same as any other program such as the software which drives this forum. It is called a virus or trojan or malware because on the nasty things it can do or your use PC and it's internet connection to do.

Windows have probably 90% of the worldwide market therefore quid pro quo suggests that 90% of the nastyness will be windows targeted.

Any operating system can be at risk from a virus but linux products less so for two reasons.

Firstly it is not that widely used (as yet but is becoming more popular) and secondly the way it installs itself means it pretty much automatically disables the admin account. The install software you will always have to go SUDO and enter passwords, nothing is done automatically even updates to the operating system. Therefore it is much harder for nasties to get onto these type of systems.

The not so widely used also applies to Apple and Android but as they become more mainstream more nasty stuff will target them.

Windows machines with their users almost by default will use the admin account as most cannot be bothered to introduce individual users without admin rights.

Thanks geezer. I bought my Mac from an Apple store so it was one of their people who told me about the lack of virus issues on a Mac.