Anti Virus software

[Kazy]

Whats the best anti virus software I should get? I dont want it to hurt my performance and just do what it needs to do and I dont mind spending a little bit of money!

[Techicolors]

malwarebytes. i also have bitdefender plus which i've got from a bundle sale, and it's quite good thus far 

[NTDaws]

bitdefender.

[Sniperfox47]

Malwarebytes is great but it doesn't really target the same threats as most other traditional antivirus software.

 

Bitdefender and Kaspersky are the two that are consistently rated highest on av-comparatives.org's tests. Of the two Bitdefender is quite a bit lighter on system resources, but Kaspersky has less stuff broken with it on Windows 10, if you play around in advanced settings.

 

Like at one point I flipped a setting in Bitdefender that borked a number of software that uses the built in web service, such as Epic's game launcher for Paragon, and for a while the profile modes that disable notifications were screwing up and completely locking the group policy and disabling notifications even after I turned the profile off.

 

Would strongly suggest Malwarebytes plus some sort of conventional antivirus like Bitdefender or Kaspersky.

 

P.S. Stay away from McAfee. You're better off with Windows Defender than you are with it.

[vong]

28 minutes ago, Kazy said:

Whats the best anti virus software I should get? I dont want it to hurt my performance and just do what it needs to do and I dont mind spending a little bit of money!

Bitdefender. They always seem to have holiday sales which is nice.

[TetraSky]

Before buying any anti virus, just try out their free trials.

 

The others above are recommending Bitdefender, but it honestly simply never worked for me. It would fail outright on startup or simply shutdowns my entire internet access from my computer because it would use its own SSL certificates or some other BS thing like that. (most websites I use are "secure" HTTPS websites, like LTT for example, bitdefender would prevent me from accessing any of them) It's a known issue and they even suggest disabling a feature of their software(Scan SSL) on their own website if you have that issue. Which is honestly ridiculous.
http://www.bitdefender.com/support/cannot-access-secure-websites-since-i-installed-bitdefender-1600.html

 

Really, these days, unless it's some low end laptop with a 5200rpm HDD, I would say that most anti virus won't cause much, if any, slowdown on your PC. As long as the anti virus is up-to-date, any of them will do the job just fine. I personally lean toward AVG Internet Security and Norton Security over other solutions, but that's because I've actually tried multiple anti virus suites and came to like those two in particular.

 

Another way to choose an anti virus is to look at independent third party reviews like this one
https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-10/

Sort by Performances to see the "best" of the lot.

 

Oh and just as a reminder, Malwarebytes is NOT an anti virus. A lot of people seems to forget that. So don't just get that and think you're done with this subject. While it is a good software, the free version is pretty much only good to solve your malware issues after the fact and the paid version actively scans everything, alongside your actual anti virus, which will cause slowdowns. So you're better off getting a proper anti virus suite and use the free version of malwarebyte every once in a while "just in case".

[Sniperfox47]

4 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Another way to choose an anti virus is to look at independent third party reviews like this one

https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-10/

Sort by Performances to see the "best" of the lot.

Be careful using av-test.org as a point of reference (or anyone else who has Norton/Symantec on their list). They allow antivirus developers to pick and choose what tests get run on their antivirus software, giving an increadibly unfair impression about how dependable their software is.

 

The whole reason I'm so suspicious about the quality of results from Norton is that Symnatec has actually threatened lawsuits before over companies not using their skewed numbers.

[TetraSky]

9 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Be careful using av-test.org as a point of reference (or anyone else who has Norton/Symantec on their list). They allow antivirus developers to pick and choose what tests get run on their antivirus software, giving an increadibly unfair impression about how dependable their software is.

 

The whole reason I'm so suspicious about the quality of results from Norton is that Symnatec has actually threatened lawsuits before over companies not using their skewed numbers.

Wasn't that just an assumption people made? Because they "pulled out" of some other test since it didn't use Real-World testing? Though they do made a "slight" come back to that particular test this year and they give some information about it in their intro paragraph.

 

I also can't find any information about them threatening to sue anyone.

[Sniperfox47]

5 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Wasn't that just an assumption people made? Because they "pulled out" of some other test since it didn't use Real-World testing?

I also can't find any information about them threatening to sue anyone.

I can't offer you any firm evidence personally, and I don't know if it exists on the web, but I know some of the people involved in the av-comparatives "withdrawal" if they want to call it that, and it wasn't as clean and dry as that post seems to make it. Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt because I don't have the kind of references I can cite and I do have a personal bias on the matter, but I'll still suggest that people be careful with their sources of information. Not all "independent third parties" are equally independent.

 

Edit: also just a correction, they said they pulled out because AV-Comparatives wouldn't let them *only* do real-world tests, not because they wouldn't let them do those tests in the first place.

 

The problem with real-world tests without context is that they don't provide any context to the results, so even if they may test a close to real world scenario, their results are pretty easy to game for a company that attempts to do so. That's why AV-Comparatives told them to screw off when they wanted to only have Real World testing with no other tests run.

[MLGMelon]

20 hours ago, Kazy said:

Whats the best anti virus software I should get? I dont want it to hurt my performance and just do what it needs to do and I dont mind spending a little bit of money!

Bitdefender for paid AV, but if you want a free one (that's really lightweight and decent) try Sophos Home - it's an enterprise antivirus, but they make a free home one. Super simple, no toolbars or anything like that. Everything is controlled from the web console and the only alerts you will get are for threats detected. https://home.sophos.com/

[Drake3325]

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