Non sucky Antiviruses

[Guest]

Is there an ad-free, adware free, non intrusive AV which actually works really well? I've been sticking with Avast and I've been looking for alternatives but so far they all look fucking shit. There's like, different degrees of suckyness, and so far Avast is the least crap, at least I've been able to disable the ads and other annoyances pretty easily, and I feel safe-ish with it (I've read that some AVs bricked entire computers, so, eh), Malwarebytes always ends up doing a better job though.

 

TL:DR: Avast isn't too bad, or too great, but the alternatives look far worse, does a good alternative even exist?

[Marioysikax 89]

inb4 Mirh "who needs AV anyways?"

 

Basic Windows Defender is best of keeping quiet and not interrupting with anything stupid, but I personally felt like it was being far too quiet and found out that cleaner tools like ccleaner may actually make it stop working entirely because some temp files that shouldn't be in use get deleted... >_> 

 

Avast with game HDD whitelisted (all stuff put there goes trough virus check and then malwarebytes from time to time) and ads (including the one that invades your gmail signature) disabled and running malwarebytes monthly has been most pleasant experience. Avira seems to be on the same level, but personally haven't gotten around trying it. 

 

Worst choise is AVG, not only does it constantly bother you and give false flags from left to right, it also has really bad habit of breaking games, I have actually fixed couple people computer game problems by simply switching AV from AVG to anything else. Ironically, paid solutions are the next worst thing, because free AVs these days are pretty good, they have started to transform into these "computer health" programs instead, which include everything from antivirus, antimalware and disk defrag to facebook wall checkers. 

 

Malwarebytes always ends up doing a better job though.

That's because it does almost completely differend job. They even state on their website that running both antivirus constantly and antimalware periodically is the best combination. 

[Blackbird 54]

I use ESET NOD32 and it doesn't bother me in any way and works well. It's not free tho.

And Malwarebytes too yeah.

[Guest]

inb4 Mirh "who needs AV anyways?"

 

Basic Windows Defender is best of keeping quiet and not interrupting with anything stupid, but I personally felt like it was being far too quiet and found out that cleaner tools like ccleaner may actually make it stop working entirely because some temp files that shouldn't be in use get deleted... >_> 

 

Avast with game HDD whitelisted (all stuff put there goes trough virus check and then malwarebytes from time to time) and ads (including the one that invades your gmail signature) disabled and running malwarebytes monthly has been most pleasant experience. Avira seems to be on the same level, but personally haven't gotten around trying it. 

 

Worst choise is AVG, not only does it constantly bother you and give false flags from left to right, it also has really bad habit of breaking games, I have actually fixed couple people computer game problems by simply switching AV from AVG to anything else. Ironically, paid solutions are the next worst thing, because free AVs these days are pretty good, they have started to transform into these "computer health" programs instead, which include everything from antivirus, antimalware and disk defrag to facebook wall checkers. 

 

That's because it does almost completely differend job. They even state on their website that running both antivirus constantly and antimalware periodically is the best combination.

Yes I know most of that most stuff already, about MB and etc, I already disabled the email and I'm already using the silent mode, I'll guess I'll keep sticking to Avast again for now, thanks anyway.

 

I'll probably try NOD32 when I can afford it.

[Guest]

I really wish my posts would update when I edit them. I already had considered trying NOD32, but I was hoping to get a non-trial version without paying.

[Mirh 103]

inb4 Mirh "who needs AV anyways?"

This.

 

Anyway, I guess avira it's fine.

 

Avast had just too many false positive and laming around for Mairo and my cousin, and I guess you.

AVG isn't very special in accuracy

And don't even dare to install bitdefender malware. Light, perhaps, but impossible to disable unless uninstalled.

 

And jesus, security essential is good as long.. you are careful. Which indeed is when you can already ditch AV in the first place.

If you are really worried to be too noob to defend yourself, then it's better for you to use something that isn't every hacker playground

 

I must say I never tried malwarebytes though.

 

EDIT: more critics

[Silent 7]

Avast flags half of my programs as viruses... so no.

 

Defender/Security Essentials + common sense seem to work well enough. Plus an occasional, but regular MBam scan.

[Mr.Lolendo 2]

Best free Antivirus is Comodo but it is for advanced users.

[Mars icecream 57]

​Panda had the best detection rate out of freeware programs when I last checked both AV-Comparatives and AV-Test. 

​In my opinion it's most important to use uBlock Origin and uMatrix in the web browser. Proprietary antivirus suites are often malware in itself, I wouldn't be surprised if AV programs often sell every visited URL to third-parties.

[Mirh 103]

This is just conspiracy with no actual proof at all.

We are no longer even in the early 2000s, and not even porn sites have shoody ad networks anymore.

 

In fact, my anecdotal experience, suggest me 90% of annoyances (what noob users usually call "virus") is just spamware, installed by things like softonic downloader, or java installer.

 

Fun fact: I believe this is also the reason chrome increased so mightily its share

 

Which neither AV, nor ad blockers can stop

another quite fun fact: I think 80% of users using them make up excuses to hide their superiority complex. The other 20% at least admits to have it.

 

The remainder 9.999% on the other hand, is actual malware that for god knows which reasons has been launched by the user itself (fake cd cracks, infected email attachments, bad torrents)

And I'd say just 0.001% of infections actually manages to be so apocalyptic to come from the browser itself.

 

Thankfully, in my year and half without AV I didn't encounter even one.. but had I have to be against a Pwn2Own level participant, I'm not sure even complete AV suites could save me.

​Panda had the best detection rate out of freeware programs when I last checked both AV-Comparatives and AV-Test. 

Also, is this sponsored advertising or what? Because I just checked and even though, I mean, detection rate is still reasonable, it's far from the top.

[Marioysikax 89]

In fact, my anecdotal experience, suggest me 90% of annoyances (what noob users usually call "virus") is just spamware, installed by things like softonic downloader, or java installer.

And this is why paid AV solutions like F-Secure and Norton has become these computer health programs like I said in my earlier message which not only block viruses, but also are able to detect those PUPs, where regular user would need something like malwarebytes to do that (and defraggling and registry cleaning and checking programs hogging resources and etc)

 

The remainder 9.999% on the other hand, is actual malware that for god knows which reasons has been launched by the user itself (fake cd cracks, infected email attachments, bad torrents)

I have seen how avarage person uses computer and this is why majority will need AVs now and in the future. We live in youtube tutorial age where people tell you to download this "totally not virus" packs to fix the issues and disable AV because "it's false flag", instead of researching causes for problems yourself. Even I'm not 100% certain of things, so I will keep using AV as long as I'm using Windows on my machine. 

[Mirh 103]

Yes, definitively.

AVs are necessary with 95% of people.

 

My hate was more towards ad blockers, not only for the usual moral implications I see, but now even for this alleged security.

 

Oh, and it's nice AV are also addressing this kind of issues. Even though I wonder if there couldn't be a correlation with the fact F-secure is among the most false positive prone solutions out there.

[sampringle 0]

I have been using Kaspersky for more than a couple of years and it is pretty good.

[mrpenguinb 4]

BitDefender is the best anti-virus protection software that actually does something decent from my experience. I haven't used BitDefender for a long time, so my experience isn't really relevant. Kaspersky I don't trust with its country of origin, a bit risky in my opinion.

Using Windows Defender and MalwareBytes on Windows 10 in 2020 is all that is really needed if you don't visit sketchy websites and install from sketchy sites like softonic. The only concerns are exploits like SMB (EternalBlue) that affect the underlying operating system, which can't always be prevented/patched easily.

[Aemony 142]

I used to use BitDefender, and it was great up until the moment when it wasn't. For me, it was how injecting the Advanced Thread Defense module (scans processes I/O operations from within) often caused games and applications to crash -- with no real identifier about what caused the crash. Ubisoft games that were frequently updated in particular often saw major issues with it. It have historically had compatibility issues with other third-party tools such as Special K.

It also had a tendency to constantly remind you of its presence, even if it were to notify you weekly about latest threats it prevented (0, every week).

So after having used it for like 1-2 years of my 3 years subscription I ended up removing it from my machines one at a time as I noticed that Windows' built-in Defender provided me with basically the same level of protection with higher third-party compatibility and it didn't nag me about its presence.

I still like BitDefender, but... nowadays I don't necessarily needs the most advance or in-depth security suite as user action is still the first (and most important) line of defense.