Question What antivirus do you use?

[emitfudd]

Looking for feedback on what antivirus you guys and ladies use. I am looking for a free antivirus. I don't need all the bells and whistles of a full security suite. I am looking for something that won't slow my PC down especially while gaming. Kaspersky is out, it stopped working on both of my PC's. Microsoft Defender is out. It is apparently completely missing from my older PC.

I was looking at Bitdefender but it requires IE 11 which isn't even available and I use Firefox.

Let me know what AV you use and any cons. If it has constant pop ups or alerts (especially ones that pop up during gaming) I don't want it. If it slows my PC down while scanning I don't want it. I know it will have some impact on my system but lighter is better.

I am running a 5900X with 3080 on Windows 10 Pro 22H2 if it makes any difference.

 

[USAFRet]

The included Windows Defender, across all my house systems.

 

[lvt]

I have used Avast, Kapersky... among others.

Actually, the W10's built-in antivirus is the only antivirus app that I have.

 

[geofelt]

Windows defender is very good on catching known viruses.
That is all I use.
It is not intrusive, updated automatically and uses little resource.

What it does not do is look for "in the wild" viruses that have not been seen before.

Most viruses will come in via "social engineering"
Don't visit porn sites or click on unknown emails and you are good.

 

[ThomasKinsley]

The AV mattered a lot more in the older days when it was the only available protection, perhaps with a very basic firewall included. Now we have many other defenses, including tracker/ad blockers and malware detection built into the browser. We've also deprecated several insecure programs, such as Kazaa, Flash, Java, and more. The last time I was hit with malware of any sort was probably around 10 years ago. Maybe even longer. I still run routine scans for the entire system, but when it comes to checking individual files I highly recommend using a website called VirusTotal.com. It scans the file with 50+ AV scanners and gives the results within a minute.

Stay safe!

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Kaspersky Premium and Hitman Pro as a second opinion scanner.

 

[emitfudd]

I keep seeing TotalAV recommended as one of the best av available with 100% malware detection during tests. I had never heard of it before. Anybody using it? At this point I'm leaning toward the free edition of Avast.

 

[USAFRet]

I keep seeing TotalAV recommended as one of the best av available with 100% malware detection during tests. I had never heard of it before. Anybody using it? At this point I'm leaning toward the free edition of Avast.

You do realize that a LOT of sites that recommend a particular AV (or VPN) are paid by those publishers to say that.

You need to look for really independent tests.

And NO AV tool is 100%, no matter what anyone says.

 

[whatdoitypehere9937982739]

I just use Defender on Windows, viruses are not that prevalent anymore, not saying they don't exist, just that they are targeting businesses instead now. And for Linux I use nothing, there are a very low amount of malware that targets Linux.