Quote Originally Posted by ameerat42 View Post
If the AV program is free, then it almost certainly has ONLY the base antivirus
feature enabled. It will NOT have the firewall, [browsing] and [other] protection
featues activated, ALL of which you SHOULD have running somehow.
A firewall is an essential element of online protection, and I have used Zone Alarm free for years. It has proven very effective, and asks permission every time something tries to access the 'net or otherwise interfere with my up/down traffic. As far as anti-virus is concerned (although I do not use a Mac) I use Windows Defender which is also very effective.