Should I buy an Antivirus program?

[Kickflapper]

My Bitdefender AV just expired. It's Cyber Monday. Everything is way cheaper. Should I buy an Antivirus program. If so what?

[DoctorNick]

3 minutes ago, Kickflapper said:

My Bitdefender AV just expired. It's Cyber Monday. Everything is way cheaper. Should I buy an Antivirus program. If so what?

You use win 10? If yes, just use defender, delete bitdefender and restart. If you use windows 7, then download microsoft security essentials.

[keskparane]

Over the past decade I've been concerned a couple of times I might have a virus. But every time I've installed an antivirus program to check and nothing has been found. Stay legit and I don't think you've really got to worry that Windows can't handle AV for you.

[KingZarathos]

No, you really shouldn't. Windows defender is pretty damn good today

[Sharif]

Been using the windows one for the last 3 years, don't see myself installing another one anytime soon

[AndrewB121]

Like everyone so far has said, windows defender is fine. If you're really concerned then bitdefender free or occasionally running malwarebytes will be more than enough. 

[ItsVisionPone]

Personally I recommend going with Windows Defender, I've had my PC for the past 3 years and I've used it for multiple reasons, its free, its easy and it does the job just fine. :3

Because in the end the best way to stay safe over the internet from viruses, is to actually have common sense, be aware of what you click and form times to times run a full scan, which Windows Defender does ^^

[Mad153]

depends what you do with your computer... I use bitdefender on my man rig, where i download stuff for programming etc which could be dogey. However, on my laptop, where i don't download anything really (it's for work), windows defender is ok? it uses a lot of resources for such a crap product but still somewhat less than bitdefender paid.

i would recommend you get a paid solution because:

windows defender has 0 capability at dealing with 0 hour threats (viruses which are not in the database), unlike most paid subscriptions, which can accuratley guess based on behaviour if a process is a virus. It also has no firewall feature - and before you say smartscreen can save you, it hasn't saved anyone. It's a bit like UAC.

 

 

i would recommend you use at least bitdefender free or sophos home free, which are actually great and so much better than windows defender.

[jones177]

Things get past Windows Defender so I use it only on my gaming PC. It does not browse the internet. 

 

On my Browsing PCs I use  Windows Defender and GData. 

 

I don't use Norton or Mcafee because they do let things by.  With Gdata nothing gets by and I have been using it since 2013.

[Bombastinator]

TLDNR:  If a home user and not a business user: I could be really wrong, but no.  
 

The conventional wisdom was that the free versions of popular antimalware programs are, while not as convenient to use, nearly as effective as the paid ones.  They’re totally legit for home use.  Not for business use though.  
 

Defender actually used to be one of these.  It was called “(something)7” before Microsoft bought it. The problem with defender is not that it is bad, but that it is so heavily targeted.  If a piece of malware can’t beat windows defender there’s almost no reason to write it.  The standard move was, and may still be, to run Windows defender and a single other free antimalware program that takes a different approach.  They’re generally formulated to play nice with defender because it’s so ubiquitous.  

This may have changed though.  Some specialize in locking down the machine from accepting anything bad, some concentrate on finding stuff already in place.  I don’t recall which one defender does, and this approach may now be considered to be bad.

[GenericFanboy]

I always have the same advice honestly; Just dont click on stupid links. Dont download stupid stuff. Has been working fine for me for years.

[Roswell]

13 minutes ago, GenericFanboy said:

I always have the same advice honestly; Just dont click on stupid links. Dont download stupid stuff. Has been working fine for me for years.

That's not how it works. I'm just going to quote myself from a previous thread:

 

Quote

Infected ads, compromised commenting systems, hijacked web platforms (WordPress/Joomla), infected office files in professional settings and a multitude of other things are out of most users control.

 

Hell, how about the millions that got infected with Trojans when CCleaner's servers got hacked and they injected the official installers?

 

"Don't download sketchy stuff" is one of the more ignorant things that can be said about computer security.

 

[flashiling]

i take on the bit defender ½ year subs that linus puts out and i love it since it helps me when spam pages get auto opened when watching SAO alicization WoU since it's not available on crunchyroll.

it auto stops and just allows me to press "go back to safety" and the popups gets closed (this is on mobile btw)

on pc i've never had any issues with viruses and i've even tried to get some intentionally.

[D.U.F.F.]

-Censored-

[TetraSky]

You can literally keep using bitdefender for free.

Just get their free trials and make a new account using a throwaway email.
Sign out of your account on the bitdefender software (My account > Switch account), sign in the newly created account with the trial activated... And suddenly you have an extra 90 days for free.

https://www.bitdefender.com/media/html/consumer/new/get-your-90-day-trial-opt/index.html

You can do this also with a 180 days trial if you find one. LTT had one as a sponsor not long ago that I grabbed too.

You can keep doing this pretty much infinitely. I've been doing it for the last 2 years or so.