[WARNING] Read For More Info

[McWxXx]

Group of hackers called "Anonymous" are out taking over people computers to DOS various sites. So PLEASE be sure to scan what you download, and your entire computer full scan and all.

Anonymous is a group who is to be taken very serious, and if I'm paranoid you should be to. They've hacked into government severs, and more before so please do take this serious.

Here's a list of free anti-virus and firewall programs you can use.

Avast

http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download


Aviera

http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

Malwarebytes

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

RemoveIt Pro v4 SE

http://www.incodesolutions.com/removeit.php

Commodo

http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

+I personally recommend these, also keep them updated. They all work on XP, Vista, Windows 7, and can be installed side by side w/o any issues.

Again this is a warning to help protect you.

[Ryudo]

Another free antivirus that you can use is AVG.

Personally I recommend Avast as it's pretty much one of the best free (and commercial) ones out there, besides Kaspersky. The latter isn't free though.

[JizzaBeez]

And if you're still unsure then you can use a virtual setup, or something like Sand Boxie (http://www.sandboxie.com/) to isolate what you're using.

[OmegaGamer]

Anonymous am sure i've heard of them, are they not the guys the casually crashed master-card n visa sites during this wikileaks clusterf**k ? and they have done a whole load of other things if am correct ?
but yea McWxXx is right about Anonymous, they are pretty serious business

[Magnus Hydra]

Anonymous eh? Never heard of them they must be anonymous....

Anyways, Sand Boxie is a great program as jizzy said. Also why would they waste there pro-skills on common computers?

[Genesis]

Yea nice post I can use some protection:)

[BlackHeart]

Thanks for the anti-virus protection programs :)

[BlackHeart]

Be sure if ur trial runs out revert ur time back which gives u more time if u do this everytime ur trial runs out ull have anti virus forever i know this work for avira dnt know bout the others so ull have to try it out for the other :)

[BrayWyatt]

is avast better than avg?

[Emerald Lance]

Anonymous? You mean, like Anon? The so called "hackers on steroids" thing?

For those who don't know, I'll shed some light on the situation. I don't mean this in any way to offend the OP (or any other poster); I just want to take away some of the fear and give some understanding.

There exists an image board called 4chan (I'm sure most of you at least know of its existence). People can post in 4chan even without signing up as a member; the default username for guests is "Anonymous" and guests are in fact encouraged to use this name so that they don't stand out (the type of place 4chan is, you don't want people to recognize you). Because so many people opt to use the Anonymous moniker (easily 99.99%, and I'm not exaggerating), it quickly became internet slang for "everyone". Before long, Anonymous as a name adopted an almost spiritual meaning: an individual person may be good, but people as a group in general (especially when given the "mask of anonymity" to hide behind) are evil. This led to large numbers of people using the name to hide behind while they did more or less anything they wanted. Committing any acts that were looked down upon (mostly illegal) under that name soon became extremely popular, and so any crime that was committed in the name of Anonymous is often credited to this "group". In reality, Anonymous isn't actually a group in the conventional sense; there's no leaders, there's no rules, and there's no structure. Like I said before, Anonymous simply means (faceless) everyone; you are Anonymous, I am Anonymous, the entire world is Anonymous. You could liken it to walking through the grocery and seeing the random people pass you by; any one of them could be a police officer or priest, or even a serial killer or rapist, and nobody would know just by looking at them. That's what Anonymous means: the world is populated by faceless individuals, and any one of them capable of anything.

As far as there being a group of hackers, this isn't true, at least not to the extent that most people think it is. For instance, Anonymous is often credited to hacking a handful of Australian government sites in protest to the pornography censorship laws in place, which would be true if "hacking" meant flooding the site with Caturday pictures and shock images in order to clog up the servers. Yes, there are Anonymous who are also hackers, but they're not out to get anyone.

This video pretty much sums it up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0WCLKzDFpI. There are other sources that I won't post here because of their offensiveness. In short, I wouldn't be so scared of Anonymous. Chances are they don't care about us. They're not really out to get anybody, so long as they aren't crossed in regards to a subject important to them (ie, the Australian censorship laws). And besides, most of the people here are more adept at hacking than most of Anonymous. We'll be fine. ^-^

However, all of that notwithstanding, it is always smart to be on the safe side regardless. AVG is the best that I've come across, as it brings anything that can even maybe be a virus to your attention, as well as being constantly updated. For added measure, Zone Alarm tells you when a program is trying to access your sensitive files or even the internet, and won't let it do so until you've given manual permission. I'm not sure if Zone Alarm has a free version, but AVG definitely does. I hope I've helped ease some of the stress on this issue, and I hope I haven't upset anybody in my correction.

[BlackHeart]

I personally Perfer Avira gets the job done n when its done u can keep getting more time by changing ur date n time back

[Paprika]

Anonymous? You mean, like Anon? The so called "hackers on steroids" thing?

There exists an image board called 4chan (I'm sure most of you at least know of its existence). People can post in 4chan even without signing up as a member; the default username for guests is "Anonymous"


You broke the first rule of 4Chan dammit:P

But I will say pretty much what I said on the same post back on xboxdev:
Anon is no threat towards users, its just the media trying to highlight this group since they came out in the open and did what they did to Mastercard's and Visa's websites

Anon's are not something you should be paranoid about they are not a real threat (there is a small handful of people who would know but that is a small handful)

[Creeative316]

im using bitdefender as it been helpin me ;)

[Ryudo]

is avast better than avg?

In my opinion it is. I used to use AVG mainly before having used Avast.

AVG 7.5 was great, then came 8.5 where it became somewhat of a resource hog, and 9.x is pretty much really bad compared to the older versions.
This is just my personal preference though. Everyone has a software they like more than the other. You decide on your own which one you like the most.

Avast has never let me down yet so far.