Computer Health and Safety - Anti-Virus Software

IT IS MANDATORY to have up-to-date antivirus software on your pc or laptop. If you paid for and installed Norton AV, McAfee or any other software in the past, make sure your subscription hasn't expired and that the program is still updating. If you are not sure, it probably isn't!

If you do not have any virus protection it is only a matter of time before your computer becomes infected - disastrous not only for you, but potentially for hundreds of other machines on the network. Two alternative free-to-student anti-virus packages are detailed below.

Please be aware that it is a very bad idea to have more than one active anti-virus package installed at once.
If you change anti-virus packages, make sure you have definitely removed any older packages from your computer first. Most packages will have an Uninstall icon in their Start Menu -> Programs folder, otherwise they can be removed using 'Add/Remove Programs' in the Control Panel.

College auto-updating Sophos Antivirus

When you connect to the college network you can download and install Sophos Anti-Virus at no cost which will automatically update and protect your machine, alternatively you can use the version(s) offered by OUCS.

Several versions are available

Additional Free Anti-virus software

An alternative recommendation is AVG from Grisoft, which updates itself over the Internet from anywhere in the world. It is available as a fully-functional free version and as a paid-for version with more features and entitlement to AVG's Technical Support.

Finding Out More

For more information on viruses visit the OUCS email and virus webpages at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/email/viruses/.