Some security is better than no security, said Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert with Counterpane Internet Security Inc. "I can complain about them (the free products), but going out free to millions and millions of users, you have to like that."

Yet it's not entirely clear how many users even know of the free offerings.

Bari Abdul, McAfee's vice president for consumer marketing, said Internet users often configure their browsers to bypass home pages that high-speed service providers use to promote free software.

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AOL subscriber Gail Taylor, a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said she never knew AOL gave away security software.

But even after checking a number of free produucts at the request of The Associated Press, she said she still couldn't decide which of the free or fee offerings work best for her. She said she'd need to find time for more research, leaving her computer largely unguarded for now.

Consumers who do install free products may be left with a false sense of security, added David Luft, a senior vice president for security vendor CA Inc.

"Some of those limitations aren't always obvious to the end users until they run into a problem they thought might be addressed," he said. "They think they have something that's fully protecting them, when in reality they don't protect in a way they might need."

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