I spend a lot of my time opposing e-criminals these days, which started when I met captive women online at streaming webcam sites (http://endmafia.com).
So I have a few tips I can share with you. I've had security issues with free software generaly, but also AVG & McAfee. Also steer clear of anything assosiated Yahoo! or Google, tool bars, software, even there search engine, which return rigged results (You may remember Google were sued for promoting paedophile ****ography, famously refusing to hand a weeks search terms to the US dept. of justice). Searches with live.com, ask.com are better. Ashampoo's free software has worked well for me.