Developers of products designed to keep us safe and happy while computing have decided that fall is the time of year to introduce their new lines of products. Symantec, McAfee, Grisoft and Panda recently released new versions of their Internet security products using the months when our attention turns to goblins and turkeys to make us aware of all the new threats that await us in cyberspace.

Norton Internet Security 2007 ($69.99 for one year), Norton Confidential ($29.99), McAfee Internet Security Suite ($49.99 for one year), Grisoft's AVG Internet Security ($69.99 for two years) and Panda Internet Security 2007 Platinum Edition ($43.95 for six months) have all hit store shelves. They can be ordered via the Internet. Except for a few subtle differences, they all do their jobs fairly well - blocking viruses, splattering spyware and filtering spam to the best of their abilities. However there are a few differences. The offerings from Norton and Panda are the least intrusive, allowing you to go about your day to day tasks with a minimum of interference. They don't seem to be as effective in picking up adware and spyware as the products from McAfee and AVG are. Rescanning test computers using McAfee and AVG products revealed that there were several nasty files still lurking on computer and had to be blasted into oblivion. Unfortunately, the McAfee security suite interfered with the ability to upload pages to my Web site and produced few other minor annoyances. Since it is less flexible than its competitors, I had to disable either the program's firewall or the computer monitoring process to complete my tasks. These instances were rare, but it would've helped if one has configured the firewall to allow these tasks.

On the plus side, the McAfee suite includes McAfee Site Advisor, which tells you how safe - or dangerous - every Web site is based on spam, adware and online scam safety tests. It also delivers full reports on the sites at the click of a button. Another nice feature is its ability to rate sites when you perform a search using Google or any other search engine.

Whitepapers

The spyware battle
Spyware - a hidden threat

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