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QOTW: Which anti-virus do you use, if any?

by Parm Mann on 25 September 2015, 16:31

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When you consider that anti-virus and security software is intended to protect its users, it's remarkable that so many solutions get such a bad rap.

Many are often described as bloatware and in today's world, a clean install is favoured by many users as a means to get rid of time-bombed security suites just waiting to nag you into buying a subscription. And, well, you know, we're consumers, we want the very best protection but we want it for free.

So let's get a real-world overview by opening up the topic to you, our readers. We want to know: which anti-virus do you use, if any? Let us know which solutions are recommended and which are best avoided using the comments facility below.



HEXUS Forums :: 112 Comments

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Panda AV

I was a long time AVG user until they flooded the thing with ads.
Defender or Security Essentials, where applicable, and MBAM, and common sense.

Most packages out there, free or otherwise, are full of bloat and feature creep, and slowly but surely, the companies are being revealed to be something slightly less ‘wholesome’ than they advertise. AVG selling user info, no matter how basic…. Kapersky getting caught spiking results of their competitors…. and now it's been revealed that some of the packages actually make your system MORE vulnerable, rather than less? Thank you, but no.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/security-wares-like-kaspersky-av-can-make-you-more-vulnerable-to-attacks/
Windows Defender is doing a good enough job for me at the moment. I've not been convinced for the last couple of years that the free AV options offer anything better and importantly Defender is extremely non-intrusive and gets updated with all the other Windows updates.
On my main machine, it's ClamAV (to pick up those nasty Windows viruses), (main box runs Linux)

On the gaming machine it's McAfee - mainly because I got a good deal, but also because I'm too lazy to look at other solutions. Figuring that, these days, they're pretty all uniformly bloated and awful. Microsoft's “Defender” is the one I recommend to family and friends figuring that if Microsoft can't get their OS secured then there's no hope for it.
Spreadie
Panda AV

I was a long time AVG user until they flooded the thing with ads.

Yep. Installed AVG on a bunch of machines a long while back (family etc). The only thing stopping me changing is the migration effort…