Are free security products safe?

Dear PropellerHeads: My friend told me to stop paying for Windows PC security and use one of the free products out there. Is it safe?

A: Weird... my teeth hurt. What's that about?

With apologies to Sir Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, safe is relative. So, free antivirus protection may be just the thing for some people.

Subscription-based anti-virus programs, like McAfee (mcafee.com), Norton/Symantec (antivirus.norton.com), Kapersky (kaspersky.com), and others provide good protection at affordable prices, usually about $30 or $40 a year. New PCs often come loaded with a 90-day or 1-year trial subscription. Many are left wondering what they should do when the friendly reminder tells them that it's time to renew. You could make a lot worse decisions than re-upping for a year, especially if you've had no problems. So, no news really may be good news. PC Magazine has written a nice article (http://bit.ly/7T5kDy) reviewing lots of security products.

There are lots of free choices. PropellerHeads like free. By the way, we pay for comprehensive anti-virus protection at our office. The risk there is greater, the downside worse and office suites have some built-in admin tools that make our life easier.

At home, I think saving a few bucks probably makes sense. For years, as my neighbors and cousins asked me to help them set up their PCs, I have recommended the free version of AVG (avg.com). This is a good security package and supports the virus definition and engine updates that you would expect.

Of course, AVG's free product is supposed to tempt you to upgrade to their pay-for service. Fair enough. But they have gotten pretty aggressive about it. When a new version comes out, it's pretty tough to find out how to renew the free version and not accidently sign up for the pay-for one. One hint is to go to Download.CNET.com and search for "AVG free" instead of navigating through the AVG site.

Other very good and free PC security products that might work for you include MalWareBytes (malwarebytes.org), SpyBot (safer-networking.org) and Ad-Aware (Lavasoft.com/Ad-Aware). Be careful where you download any products. Make sure you are at the official site so you don't fall prey to unscrupulous imitators that might make things worse for you.

There is a new player in town, sort of. Microsoft has released its latest entry into PC home security, called Microsoft Security Essentials (microsoft.com/security) Best of all... it's free! This is a replacement for its previous products, OneCare and Defender. It also has an enterprise security solution called Forefront.

But Security Essentials is great for home use. I have installed this on a few computers and so far so good.

It installed very nicely. What I like best is that the default settings are all pretty well thought-out. For instance if it detects an attack while you're away from your PC, after 10 minutes of no response from you, it will take the default protection action. That usually means it will delete the bad guy after taking a system restore point. The only setting I changed was to do a weekly full scan instead of the quick scan it recommended.

MSE will run on XP, Vista and Windows 7. Microsoft says this will protect you from the bad stuff out there, including viruses, spyware, adware, rootkits, worms and trojans. Time will tell how well this protects our PCs, but overall I have been impressed. It's basically, install and forget about it. Unlike some products I have used in the past, it doesn't seem to eat up all your computing power to do its job.

So, bumping into Nazi dentist/diamond smugglers is definitely not safe. But good PC security protection is and is priced right. Hey... you got any oil of cloves?

When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. E-mail them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our Web site at www.askthepropellerheads.com.