Recommendations for antivirus software?

[Iannis]

Big fan of ESET NOD32 AV. Been using it for like a decade now.
Small performance footprint. Have had zero issues with it across a dozen or more different computers and operating systems.

[pansertjald]

You really dont need to worry about anti virus. The Windows one is good enough for that. Anti malware though is a must. Malwarebytes is the best available. If you're super paranoid buy full version but really the free version is fine.

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Ah yes reviews. 100% totally trustworthy reviews that were done all by IT professionals and people that understand how viruses and malware work.

From Danish Computer World. Just scroll down and look at the graph. Microsoft Defender is in the buttom

Best Antivirus program

[Quibble]

I download stuff now and then, surely at least once i downloaded something bad?

Why would you? You really need to be a dumbass to download something bad..

Such as clicking on a "you got virus, download our cleaner" banner kind of advertisement..

Back when limewire was a thing, getting infected was super easy when downloading.. But torrenting, is pretty safe, as long as your not a complete nitwit.

[Shadow Fox]

I use Norton. Not sure how much I pay yearly, but it protects several devices (my phone, my tablet, my computer, my laptop and my mom's laptop)

There was a but of a joke / meme going around for a looooong time, even in several computer classes... "Norton is the Virus" proding at how terrible Norton was, and hogging system resources, preventing some things from running.

So it's sort of amusing that Norton wasn't even ranked. (Or at least not even mentioned to be viable.)

[ComputerNerd]

Windows Defender and Malwarebytes. Everything else bogs your computer down and tries to sneak extra programs into their installations. Avast and Ad-Aware used to be fairly okay years back, but both are just a minefield now. Norton and McAfee charge you money for basically nothing, and I remember seeing bad things about Kaspersky a long time ago and never trusted them since. If you're careful about what you download and where you go, and make backups, you'll be fine with the basics.

On another computer I was using Microsoft Security Essentials and it was just the opposite.
Seemed to be tied to the real-time scanning, which was hugely detrimental to performance.

Plus it is a rather poor generalisation to say that everything else is bad.
I would have to agree on poor practices from McAfee and Norton particularly though, from personal experience.

[Gilgemesh]

I use bitdefender.
Mostly because it is very very lightweight and is fantastic about not bothering me while I'm gaming. No sounds. No popups. Just does the thing it's intended to do without any showboating or self promotion.

[Quibble]

From Danish Computer World. Just scroll down and look at the graph. Microsoft Defender is in the buttom

Best Antivirus program

I wouldn't trust that test very much..

Maybe their problems have been fixed since I last used them..

But the two best ones, Kaspersky and F-Secure? I had to find an alternative to them because they were utter shit when I used them7-8 years ago..

My entire highschool was infected by some malicious virus.. every desktop, laptop and usb.. F-secure and Kasperspy never caught it in the three years I was there..

Those of us who found an alternative (I used Avast) got warnings every time we connected a USB from the school or our class mates.

[pansertjald]

I wouldn't trust that test very much..

Maybe their problems have been fixed, since I last used them..

But the two best ones, Kasterspy and F-Secure? I had to find an alternative to them, because they were utter shit when I used them7-8 years ago..

My entire highschool was infected by some malicious virus.. every desktop, laptop and usb.. F-secure and Kasperspy never caught it, in the three years I was there..

Those of us, who found an alternative (I used Avast), got warnings every time we connected a USB from the school or our class mates.

Every Antivirus test you can find, put's Kaspersky in the top and Microsoft in the buttom.

[Lathais]

From Danish Computer World. Just scroll down and look at the graph. Microsoft Defender is in the buttom

Best Antivirus program

Looks like a typical canned "news" site to me that probably lets people pay to get a better rating. You do realize that's what most of the rating sites online are right? For myself, I trust IT proffesionals and people who work at Fortune 100 companies as the head of IT. They understand malware/viruses and how and why they work and could probably write better malware/viruses than the stuff most people get anyway. Those people tell me that Windows Defender is good enough, along with safe browsing habits. On the other hand I have a guy who can't even spell bottom telling me that it sucks and Kapersky, which has been proven to have exploitable vulnerabilities that can even allow hackers to see what's in my active memory. Also, it took them about 3 months from being told about this vulnerability to fix it. I know what I am going to use.

[pansertjald]

Looks like a typical canned "news" site to me that probably lets people pay to get a better rating. You do realize that's what most of the rating sites online are right? For myself, I trust IT proffesionals and people who work at Fortune 100 companies as the head of IT. They understand malware/viruses and how and why they work and could probably write better malware/viruses than the stuff most people get anyway. Those people tell me that Windows Defender is good enough, along with safe browsing habits. On the other hand I have a guy who can't even spell bottom telling me that it sucks and Kapersky, which has been proven to have exploitable vulnerabilities that can even allow hackers to see what's in my active memory. Also, it took them about 3 months from being told about this vulnerability to fix it. I know what I am going to use.

It's one of the most trustworthy computer sites in Denmark. So yes, they know what they are doing.

[callipygoustp]

Hmmmm, trust random posters on mmo-c or do a google search on antivirus software and see what the market says. Tough call. I guess it really depends on just how serious you are about protecting your digital devices.

[breadisfunny]

Look at the review

i want your actual reasoning as to why it's bad not what some random article says.

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Every Antivirus test you can find, put's Kaspersky in the top and Microsoft in the buttom.

kaspersky is a memory hog. last i used it it's antivirus ate up 550mb of ram.

[Lathais]

Hmmmm, trust random posters on mmo-c or do a google search on antivirus software and see what the market says. Tough call. I guess it really depends on just how serious you are about protecting your digital devices.

Yeah, do a google search, so that you can see who paid the most to be rated highly. I'm sure that's a much better solution than talking to industry professionals.

[callipygoustp]

Yeah, do a google search, so that you can see who paid the most to be rated highly. I'm sure that's a much better solution than talking to industry professionals.

Nice, bashing me for my suggestion rather than staying on topic. Keep the attacks out of it. I never said paid sites are better than IT professionals. Hell, I never said paid sites or IT professionals at all. I swear some of you guys posting on this site have nothing better to do than to create bad arguments, in this case, the good ole standard Strawman.

Yeah, do a google search, so that you can see who paid the most to be rated highly.

Not all review sites are paid.

I'm sure that's a much better solution than talking to industry professionals.

If this site had a verifiable IT professional posting, I think it would be wise to listen to them, but there is no way to verify that anyone here stating they are an IT professional is in fact an IT professional. I could easily say I am an IT professional and then provide suggestions. How would the OP know the difference? In this thread alone several suggestions have been provided but no one has provided a meaningful (non-anecdotal) reason for their suggestion.

I do not think it would be wise to make a decision based on :
1. a suggestion from someone who claims they are an IT professional without being able to verify it; just as bad as a paid site. "I suggest this software because I am an IT professional" Are there people who follow such meaningless, unsubstantiated advice? Probably. For the OP, I hope he isn't one of them.
2. the word of one person, especially not some random poster from a gaming website.

There is plenty of information out there, coming from multiple sources, that provides a good break down of what is or is not good. Not all sites are paid. Someone truly interested in securing their digital devices should be able to get a good feel for what is or isn't sufficient without much effort. A simple google search provides a wealth of information.

In closing, I am an IT professional adept at working back end/server side security, performance, and database design. When I last looked for a new anti virus software package for personal use what did I do? I compared the latest greatest packages to each other by reading material provided online.
(see what I did there!)

[SLSAMG]

Browser extensions and common sense is all you need.

[Caolela]

From Danish Computer World. Just scroll down and look at the graph. Microsoft Defender is in the buttom

Best Antivirus program

The best anti-virus/anti-malware I've used is Emsisoft (based on BitDefender). All of the others mentioned here I've used and within a year had a problem. Some even load their own malware/spyware onto your machine.

Over 3 years and never a single issue. They're also excellent with customer service.

[pansertjald]

i want your actual reasoning as to why it's bad not what some random article says.

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kaspersky is a memory hog. last i used it it's antivirus ate up 550mb of ram.

Im using Kaspersky and right now it uses 113 Mb

[Granyala]

Now? Windows Defender is enough for the job after knowing or getting an idea what is safe to download. Just watch what you click IMO.

Pretty much what I do too.

Suspicious stuff? Open it in a VM.

[Confucius]

been using Eset Nod32 for like 7 years now. No problems

[Lathais]

Nice, bashing me for my suggestion rather than staying on topic. Keep the attacks out of it. I never said paid sites are better than IT professionals. Hell, I never said paid sites or IT professionals at all. I swear some of you guys posting on this site have nothing better to do than to create bad arguments, in this case, the good ole standard Strawman.


Not all review sites are paid.


If this site had a verifiable IT professional posting, I think it would be wise to listen to them, but there is no way to verify that anyone here stating they are an IT professional is in fact an IT professional. I could easily say I am an IT professional and then provide suggestions. How would the OP know the difference? In this thread alone several suggestions have been provided but no one has provided a meaningful (non-anecdotal) reason for their suggestion.

I do not think it would be wise to make a decision based on :
1. a suggestion from someone who claims they are an IT professional without being able to verify it; just as bad as a paid site. "I suggest this software because I am an IT professional" Are there people who follow such meaningless, unsubstantiated advice? Probably. For the OP, I hope he isn't one of them.
2. the word of one person, especially not some random poster from a gaming website.

There is plenty of information out there, coming from multiple sources, that provides a good break down of what is or is not good. Not all sites are paid. Someone truly interested in securing their digital devices should be able to get a good feel for what is or isn't sufficient without much effort. A simple google search provides a wealth of information.

In closing, I am an IT professional adept at working back end/server side security, performance, and database design. When I last looked for a new anti virus software package for personal use what did I do? I compared the latest greatest packages to each other by reading material provided online.
(see what I did there!)

Bashing? How was that bashing you? If anything, the comment of i'd listen to google over some random poster was bashing everyone in this thread. I was just stating a fact. In order to be in the tpo three results on google, you HAVE to pay google. Beneath that, and most of those sites paid an SEO company or hired someone to do SEO Optimization in order to get there. In other words, your google search is only showing you people that paid to be seen.

You are correct that it is not verifiable that many people on this forum are IT Professionals. Myself, I am not, but I know many and they all tell me the same thing. Yeah, that's anecdotal. However, the guy posting that Kapersky is great? Well, I did link factual articles proving that it very recently had some major holes in it, which proves the theory that anti-virus software just opens up different vulnerabilities on your system, which is the same thing IT Professionals have been telling me for a while.

Either way, do what you want, but seriously, installing anti-virus software on your system merely uses unnecessary resources and while it may prevent some things, it just opens other holes that people can exploit.