Best way to protect teenager's laptop?

[Chimichangaz]

My son has an Acer laptop, which I have had to take back to factory settings three times due to him downloading all sorts of malware/viruses. He uses it for online gaming, skyping friends oh and homework

Last time it was badly infected and I could hardly access webpages without some page popping up and refusing to close unless I called some 'toll-free number' for help.

I've got AVG anti virus (free) and Spybot on my own laptop and (fingers crossed) never had a problem -except I get pop-up ads, even on Mumsnet, reflecting pages I've visited (e.g. if I've been on a shopping site looking at blazers, shopping ads display on the right hand of the mumsnet screen). I'd like to stop this if possible.

Obviously the sort of sites he's visiting contain malicious bugs - I have talked to him about being careful but I obviously need to install something to block these things.

Any suggestions what's best? And what's the difference between e.g. anti-virus,anti-malware, anti-spyware??

[cdtaylornats]

Malwarebytes is useful

I use Avast anti virus

[Chimichangaz]

thanks cd

I found malwarebytes this morning and have downloaded and run it on both my son's and my laptop. Also something called AdWCleaner. Seemed to clean up a lot of stuff.

[austenozzy]

Kaspersky 's free avp tool is good for a one-off cleanup but it's not resident protection. Your best bet is to stump forty quid for a proper Internet security suite. It will cover viruses, spyware, email spam and dodgy attachments, the works. I've got the kaspersky suite and it has a licence you can use on several machines (3 I think) so you can do more than pc with it.

[prh47bridge]

Anti-virus and anti-malware are two names for the same thing. Anti-malware is technically correct but historically people are used to the term anti-virus.

Anti-spyware covers only a subset of the things that are covered by anti-malware applications - specifically things that try to spy on you. Some anti-spyware software is more effective at stopping spyware than anti-malware products.

I would be cautious about trusting something just because it seems to clean up a lot of stuff. You don't know if the stuff it is cleaning is genuinely bad or not. I would always look at test results from AV-Test and AV-Comparatives - the leading organisations for independently testing anti-malware products. I would be nervous of any product that does not appear on those tests. That means the manufacturer isn't happy to allow their product to be subjected to independent expert testing.

[Chimichangaz]

Thanks all for helpful posts.

prh - those test result web pages were helpful - Kaspersky seemed to consistently come out on top so I checked online, it was about £40ish for multiple devices 1 year. While in town shopping today spotted it in WHS for £29.99 - so bought it.

Fingers crossed..