@ neem, I used to use threatfire, but I found that my pc was protected well enough without it. True, it adds an extra layer of protection, but that little bit wasn’t enough to justify the false positives and resource use imo…

Martin, any chance of an updated list?

Of course a router and safe browsing practices are the first line of defense..

But if I were you I would remove spyware terminator at once. It was once listed as a rogue app on spywarewarrior. It was de-listed in 2006 http://www.spywarewarrior.com/de-listed.htm but that doesn’t mean it’s trustworthy. In my books any company that was once involved in distributing malware (like Crawler LLC, the makers of spyware terminator were) does not deserve to be trusted, EVER.

I’d replace it with malwarebytes anti-malware instead. It is a great app, and is updated frequently. The other day there was a problem with it, and within a few hours (!!!) the makers had fixed it and released an update. That really shows commitment.

What about adding a category for preventive measures? I’d include McAfee siteadvisor (the only mcafee product I’d ever use) and keyscrambler. Another obvious one would be the firefox extension noscript.

To round it out a bit, take a look at Gizmo’s extended reviews and comments:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/pc/security-tools.html

Kaspersky is a pretty cool shareware, but one of the things I don’t like is it blocks those ads like adsense and tribalfusion by default.

“Anti-virus applications create probably the most controversy. There is so much choice of free and commercial applications that makes it nearly impossible to make a decision.”

If so, why don’t you create a guide on how to choose the best anti-virus? I’d love to know about it