McAfee
 

I've been using McAfee security for many years with good results. Last year, when I renewed, they added something called "SiteAdvisor" that drove me nuts. It's basically a net nanny to "protect children from objectionable content".

I want objectionable content, damnit! At least I want to decide what is objectionable. It took me a month to get them to remove "SiteAdvisor" and let me return to the status quo.

I get a notice my subscription has expired, so I go to renew only to find this notice...They offer three options, none without "SiteAdvisor". Fuck that! Fuck McAfee!

What are my options folks?

Linux

"Careful computing", although I wouldn't recommend it to everybody, it has worked perfectly for me. I have had no viruses or anything ever and I have never used anti-virus of any kind. This is where you:

a) never run anything from an untrusted source;
b) never INSTALL anything from an untrusted source;
c) use Firefox;
d) use Thunderbird or a web-based email such as Gmail;
... a+b+d) all executable attachments in email are untrusted;
e) if you must IM, use Pidgin;
f) don't go clicking on all kinds of shit everywhere.

People also advise that you

g) don't operate your system with Administrator rights

...although I do this all the time because I'm a bad-ass.

Other than UT's suggestion, I dropped those a-holes years ago. I use AVG free now.

McAfee fucks with my gmail, and I can't seem to fix it. What about Norton? Aren't those the two "industry standards" type things?

I use Avast free, and also follow UT's suggestions for the most part.

With Avast and AVG out there, I see no reason to pay for virus protection.

I just updated to it and I ignore the function. I have gotten use to it. It changes nothing.

I used it for a month, a year ago, Merc. Pretty hard to ignore when it interrupted every damn thing I tried to do.
That's no fun. I find some of my best yuks that way.
A friend has Norton on their computer. Every time I have to straighten something out for them (yes, there are still a couple people in the world that know less than I do) I've found Norton even more intrusive.

I originally owned McAfee and now started getting it free through Comcast. At one point an update installed that locked up Thunderbird. I had to do a Google search to find the patch, since it seems to me that one has to log in to McAfee and know exactly what the issue is before they will present a patch. The patch fixed the issue but interfered with later updates, so I had to use the McAfee Virtual Technician to rebuild and repair.

IMO, McAfee is not kind to Mozilla.

if the Site Advisor comes up a lot on sites you go to frequently, you can click on the green arrow Site Advisor icon and tell it to ignore.

I will say that Mcafee makes it hard not to buy the "full package."

?WHY? have to do this?

Exactly, Buster, I got tired of that shit.
It appeared that it would stop, me if there were any links it didn't like, on the site I was trying to go to. I don't go to many sites that don't have links to questionable content, even the Cellar has links to questionable content sometimes.

The point is, they treat me like an idiot/child. Fuck them, they're gone.

I have Norton on my computer here at work - and haven't had any trouble with it - I (without saying too much) have been to questionable sites, obviously unsuspectingly and have had no "blockages" to come up.

McAfee is not kind to performance, period.

It's a decent AV program, slightly better than Symantec AV Corporate Edition for catching viruses. The corporate version of McAfee is MUCH better than the home version, IMHO. If you can get a corporate license of it via either work or CDW, you're actually better off than buying the consumer version in the store.

However, it's known to crash machines if installed at the same time Symantec is (I have seen this on my own), and to be a bit slow. You have to add exceptions if you have certain (read: database) files on your machine.

The corporate version doesn't have all the extra crap the home version does. Same with Symantec. I'd rather pay for Symantec AV Corporate Edition and LiveUpdate or McAfee than get AVG (performance hog and kills Outlook performance), ClamAV (same), or the other free ones. The Norton home products are also garbage to the nth degree.

As I don't have any use for outlook, can't comment on that. But imho any 1/2 assed ISP would include some kinda of anti-virus detection in their deal. As to resource hogs, just install and have a look in taskmanager. If bad and free uninstall and try another. BTW what you set as defaults has some affect on this. bb

OK, McAfee is history. I loaded Avast to give that a try for awhile. Time will tell, but it seems friendly and intuitive enough for me to bumble through it.