Decent free antivirus?

[dorsetknob]

If you only visit stuff you've visited hundreds of times, and popular sites like YT, FB, News sites etc. then you don't need an AV at all.

Thank you for the larf,,,,,,
You never heard of drive thru virus and malware infection or Browser Cryptominers all have been found on regular well visted Sites such as youtube MSN many News Sites ever your Goverment Sites
those nastys usualy get there by bad adverts
we even had threads and posts here on TPU mentioning this ( and Some have Claimed TPU has even served such Tainted Ads in the past OH THE SACRILEGE OF SUCH PEOPLE >>>)

 

[exodusprime1337]

I know you're looking for free, and in that regards Windows Defender will meet the bare minimums for sure. It's detection rate isn't as high as other AV's out there but it's good enough to get by. The caveat with defender is that when using it you have to also take into account other windows settings that make it more feature rich. If you turn of safe search or use a third party browser it suffers, if you disable uac it suffers. Defender with good internet habits will get you by just fine.

When it comes to a good personal AV i personally prefer anything from Bitdefender or Trend Micro. Today's threats have moved beyond definition based malware and have moved largely into file less malware, living off the land, exploitation(autosploit), and botnet traffic. A standard definition only based AV like windows defender doesn't have what it takes to protect users as readily as a good pay for solution. Bitdefender and Trend both offer not only exploit, and definition based protections but also provide behavior based monitoring and utilize a neural network of shared data from all their agents to better detect today's and tomorrows threats. Both of these receive fantastic detection and lab scores as well as Gartner ratings for both visionaries and leaders in the magic quadrant for their industries.

Another reason to consider a good pay for option is system performance. Both the above mentioned pay for options allow for easy addition of exclusions; and come with most of the necessary exclusions built in. For this reason alone i always consider these first as i take very care that the apps running on my machines don't hinder the overall performance. Solutions from Kaspersky, avira, and others do have fantastic detection rates, but scan operations are usually system intensive and show a noticeable hit to performance. I would consider skipping Kaspersky for russia ties though. It's pretty well documented there was a backdoor built into the software which basically means it in itself is just malware nowadays.

I've worked as a cyber security engineer for quite a while and before that a senior analyst and threat hunter. Based on years of watching malware assault all various forms of OS's from mobile devices to linux to mac and windows i just wanted to provide a bit of insight about the two AV's i most prefer. You may find your money well spent opting for Bitdefender or Trend.

 

[Space Lynx]

Yeah I had one too, but I made the mistake of not deactivating that key, before retiring the pc it was tied to, so it "went down with the ship" so to speak.

They used to sell lifetime keys during their early years to drum up attention in the computer security community for their product ,but in 2014 they stopped the lifetime key ,because they felt they had enough noteriety in the security community. Sometimes you can come across one now and again but more often than not there illegitimate

When they first got started, you could actually just search for a key on YouTube/google,and keep trying over and over again ,and out of 10 tries ,you'd get three keys that actually worked

That happened to me as well, so I contacted Malwarebytes Support team, showed them my Lifetime key I had saved, told them I forgot to deactivate before a clean install, and they reset it for me.

If you still have your original key, they will reset it for you.

 

[ShurikN]

Thank you for the larf,,,,,,
You never heard of drive thru virus and malware infection or Browser Cryptominers all have been found on regular well visted Sites such as youtube MSN many News Sites ever your Goverment Sites
those nastys usualy get there by bad adverts
we even had threads and posts here on TPU mentioning this ( and Some have Claimed TPU has even served such Tainted Ads in the past OH THE SACRILEGE OF SUCH PEOPLE>>>)

I know very well about Youtube cripto ad injection, the rest I do not visit. When large sites like that get cripto infected, the word gets out, and everything gets resolved. Or if it happened by their choice, I simply don't visit them anymore.
Second. I have never in my life, NEVER got a virus visiting sites i regularly visit, and know are safe. As a matter of fact I don't think I have ever gotten my PC infected by myself. It did happen a couple of times with friends USB flash drives, but I needed the files on those drives, and removing the infection afterwards was never an issue. And it all happened during WinXP era, without any AV solutions.

 

[Space Lynx]

I know very well about Youtube cripto ad injection, the rest I do not visit. When large sites like that get cripto infected, the word gets out, and everything gets resolved. Or if it happened by their choice, I simply don't visit them anymore.
Second. I have never in my life, NEVER got a virus visiting sites i regularly visit, and know are safe. As a matter of fact I don't think I have ever gotten my PC infected by myself. It did happen a couple of times with friends USB flash drives, but I needed the files on those drives, and removing the infection afterwards was never an issue. And it all happened during WinXP era, without any AV solutions.

It's not just about virus's, viruses are a thing of the past imo. Malware is dominant now, and it doesn't usually slow your PC down, its just there for nasty purposes. Malwarebytes informs it has blocked a outgoing IP or incoming IP often... and PC is just sitting idle, so I have no idea, lol My PC works great though so meh

 

[GoldenX]

that's completely wrong & dangerous to tell others this false sense

heartbleed was the openssl package, stagefright was android's multimedia framework, every CVE in chromium is specifically the browser, the list goes on & on...

windows & osx have the exact same situation of apps/libraries having holes in them, windows simply has additional holes caused by users running as admin, apps having extra permissions (all or nothing), etc

Heartbleed affects all platforms and sofware using OpenSSL, Stagefright is an Android only problem, and Chromium is Google's fault, none of those are GNU/Linux's problems.
Something as simple as asking for the administrator's password by default saves a lot of installations, that's Windows fault.

 

[Bill_Bright]

it's available on any computer with at least Windows 7

Ummm, no. Windows Defender is only available on and included with W8 and W10.

For W7, you have to manually download and install Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). MSE is similar to, but not the same as WD anymore, nor is it as secure. But it is still a capable solution.

And for those who claim WD is not adequate or is only good for those who know what they are doing 100% of the time, or must pay enormous attention to use it, well, they clearly don't know the product, and have not used the product recently. The fact is, WD is the easiest anti-malware solution out there! It's already installed, it updates itself, and it requires no user intervention unless it finds something. And then the prompts are easy to follow. You don't have to learn another UI, run any separate update programs, or know what you are doing to use it.

And most importantly, it works.

 

[Athlonite]

It's not the the free stuff isn't good.... In the November test, Avast Free caught 99.9% of the "widespread and prevalent malware discovered in the last 4 weeks (the AV-TEST reference set)". That means that 11 viruses got thru. Once cleaned over 1200 infections out of a Defender / Essentials protected machine back in 2016 and it was back 3 months later with 670 more. Have had machines come in with all sorts of free and paid for stuff but they wouldn't be here, if they weren't infected. Ya can't fix stoopid and even the best get surprised on ocassion.

The free trials of Kaspersky or BD get most of them but once infected usually have to remove a few manually. But even in most recent test, Defender caught only 98.9% of 0-day malware attacks, inclusive of web and e-mail threats (**Real-World Testing**)", And for December it gained a 100% score But like a medicine that helps 99 people and kills just one ... that's a pretty good performance record... unless you happen to be that one.

I usually clean them with a 30 day free trial of Kaspersky or BitDefender Suites and leave it up to the user to pay for the subscription ... usually about $5 - $7 a seat. Personally, I have too many seats to have to bother with manual upgrades and manual scan runs common with many freebies. We even gave up on BitDefender whan they switched to a model where eachs eat had to be downlaoded and managed from each box. If it comes back, dealt with that once, if you get infected again you are on your own. Have never had a box infected that I was responsible for administering in 26 years.

As for the testing, any test site that doesn't use **real world** testing isn't worth looking at They have a collection of visual in the wild, they install an OS, thy install the AV, they expose it to viruses. Just as important is false positives:

Windows Defender "False detections of legitimate software as malware during a system scan - November = 11 / December = 16) Industry average is 4 not 0
"False blockages of certain actions carried out whilst installing and using legitimate software = 1 and zero here

Industry average is 0 on both counts.

And performance impacts:

"Slower installation of frequently-used applications" November = 42% (26%) December = 54% (35%)" Industry averages in ( ) Just because it was a frequently used app doesn't mean it was downloaded from a reputable place I'd rather it was fully scanned during install than not at all just because it's white listed as a "frequently used app"

That being said, what you use should depend on the value of what's being protected. If it's a gaming box, not really anything there that can't be replaced and Defender is more than enough. If that's the only copy of 1,000s of family photos or 26 years of business records, might want to give up $7 a year. If using Defender, then if something gets by, ya can always download one of the free trials and hopefully get rid of it. Get hit again, well try the other one this time.

But for my money, If it saves me 3 minutes a year, it's cheaper to pay the site license.

Fixed it for you

 

[theFOoL]

For years I used AVAST! but went along using WD after playing/Using W10Pro

Saw a video of a guy testing and dropping viruses on it and it block's each he throws at it

 

[eidairaman1]

Avast- i turn off certain modules in it. Then MBAM, SWB, SAS, might give sbsd a shot again...

 

[kn00tcn]

Heartbleed affects all platforms and sofware using OpenSSL, Stagefright is an Android only problem, and Chromium is Google's fault, none of those are GNU/Linux's problems.
Something as simple as asking for the administrator's password by default saves a lot of installations, that's Windows fault.

you just said update kernel ONLY & all is ok! must be some magical kernel that blocks all escalations & malware

nowhere did you say you/distro need to update the other software full of holes, ALL SOFTWARE YOU RUN CAN OR WILL BE THE PROBLEM, you dont only run a kernel

UAC's prompt is literally identical to the root prompt, both are a yes/no with no granular permissions, you allow the software to do whatever it wants on either OS

android uses the linux kernel, certain roms get kernel updates, a super secure updated kernel still needs every other lib & app updated, like every other OS... "doesnt affect GNU/Linux" utter BS, chromium is a multiplatform browser, android uses some of the exact same libs that desktop linux distros use, stagefright was an example but if you cant actually critically think to apply examples, how about gstreamer or ffmpeg

 

[Melvis]

Decent free antivirus Programs I would go with the following:

Avast Free (What I have used personally for many yrs now)
Bitdefender Free
Kaspersky Free (Can be a pain with Chrome though)
Avira Free
Comodo
Panda (its ok but has alot of false positives)
360 (Also has alot of false positives)

On demand scanners:

Malwarebytes
Dr Web Cureit
JRT
Emsisoft EmergencyKit
Hitman Pro
Mbar

Paid Antivirus programs I recommend:

F secure
Nod32
Bitdefender
Kaspersky
Webroot
Emsisoft

Ones that I stay away from:

Norton
Trend Micro
McAfee
MSE/Windows Defender (I spent a good part of 2yrs cleaning Computers with this Useless AV, replaced with Avast Free, my Virus cleaning went down 90% ever since)
Telstra AV
AVG (its OK but I find it to slow a PC down way to much)

There is probably I few I have missed but thats what I can remember off the top of my head.

 

[RejZoR]

AVG is actually identical to avast! underneath since Spring 2017 (when both were merged into one avast! core). Shouldn't behave any different performance wise.

 

[Melvis]

AVG is actually identical to avast! underneath since Spring 2017 (when both were merged into one avast! core). Shouldn't behave any different performance wise.

Hmm I will have to look into that one and see if it has indeed been improved to the performance of Avast. PC Speed up tool is shit though

 

[Bill_Bright]

They are identical, but different. AVG now runs the Avast engine but has maintained a few features unique to AVG. Supposedly, that Avast engine has been enhanced with AVG capabilities. Regardless, the result is the same performance and protection results.

They were supposed to release a new, single, combined anti-malware solution by the 4th quarter of last year but that has not really happened. I suspect it has something to do with brand loyalty. Staunch AVG users don't want to see their product go away, and staunch Avast users don't want their product to morph into something else (although in effect, it has).

 

[illli]

Another reason to consider a good pay for option is system performance. Both the above mentioned pay for options allow for easy addition of exclusions; and come with most of the necessary exclusions built in. For this reason alone i always consider these first as i take very care that the apps running on my machines don't hinder the overall performance. Solutions from Kaspersky, avira, and others do have fantastic detection rates, but scan operations are usually system intensive and show a noticeable hit to performance. I would consider skipping Kaspersky for russia ties though. It's pretty well documented there was a backdoor built into the software which basically means it in itself is just malware nowadays.

I wonder why the could av stuff never caught on as much. I know panda had something, but it didn't seem that great for whatever reason. but i thought the whole selling point of a cloud av was to offload the performance hit computers suffer when scanning etc

 

[lexluthermiester]

Windows Defender.

This assumes the user is willing to trust Microsoft. Not everyone does.

I prefer open source. ClamWin works well and doesn't run until you tell it and closes when you're done.

 

[exodusprime1337]

I wonder why the could av stuff never caught on as much. I know panda had something, but it didn't seem that great for whatever reason. but i thought the whole selling point of a cloud av was to offload the performance hit computers suffer when scanning etc

No the major selling point of being connected to someone like Trend or Bitdefender is they capture and analyze all the data points from their customers. Trend calls theirs a smart protect network. They take the data, analyze it and use it to create new definitions, heuristic analysis points, or behavior monitoring elements. If you have trend you even get predictive machine learning. The point where performance comes into play is whether you use real-time scan or conventional. Real-time is far less resource intensive and typically revolves around just scanning files that are created, modified, or retrieved. Where as conventional scans your whole system whether or not the files are touched. In some regards they keep a "database" of files previously scanned and then try to omit those but due to the way home computers are treated, so much changes with auto patching, people downloading crap and the like so it's kinda a wash and just takes a while. I use OfficeScan for Enterprise at home. Real-time scan always and a full scan once a week.

 

[RejZoR]

This assumes the user is willing to trust Microsoft. Not everyone does.

I prefer open source. ClamWin works well and doesn't run until you tell it and closes when you're done.

ClamWin is a thing of the past. It doesn't have heuristics, advanced emulator, behavior blocker, cloud, nothing. It's literally 1990's technology. Would you really trust it to protect you? I don't know... :/

 

[GoldenX]

This assumes the user is willing to trust Microsoft. Not everyone does.

I prefer open source. ClamWin works well and doesn't run until you tell it and closes when you're done.

You are already using something from Microsoft, so it's a moot point.
I've used ClamWin for some Server 2003 installs, it has the potential to be good, but now it's too simple.

 

[lexluthermiester]

It doesn't have heuristics, advanced emulator, behavior blocker, cloud, nothing.

You just touched on it's selling points. What it does well is scan system memory and files for virii/malware. It's detection rate is very good, but at the cost of false positives. You get that with everything so it's no big deal.
EDIT; Forgot to mention that there is a realtime scanner that uses the Clam repositories as a base. It's called Clam Sentinel. It's a bit dated but still works well.

Would you really trust it to protect you? I don't know... :/

I trust it to do what it's designed to do, scan for and find virii/malware when I ask it to. I also trust my computing methodology and ethic. I utilize hardware and software firewalls, don't go anywhere that falls under the catagory of " i shouldnt be here . com " and I don't download crap willy nilly.

You are already using something from Microsoft, so it's a moot point.

If you're referring to Defender you would be incorrect. Windows Defender is not present on any of the systems in my home, including the one that runs Windows 10. It is forcibly and physically erased on the systems where standard install media are used, and is removed from custom install media.

it's too simple.

Again, another selling point.

ClamWin;
http://www.clamwin.com/
Clam Sentinel;
http://clamsentinel.sourceforge.net/

 

[GoldenX]

I mean you are using their OS, it's a moot point to fight over a "botnet" antivirus under Windows.
You have a point with ClamWin.

 

[RejZoR]

@lexluthermiester
Oh dear god you're so wrong about ClamWin don't know even where to start. Wow it scans memory and everything! It's a dumb pattern match antivirus, about as sophisticated as antiviruses back in 1998.
Just shows how much you understand things so urge everyone reading this NOT to listen to you about this stuff. Because in this case, it's better to just be using Windows Defender. It may be primitive, but it's still light years better than ClamWin.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Oh dear god you're so wrong about ClamWin don't know even where to start.

How about starting with accepting that not everyone does things the same way and what works for some might not work for all.

Wow it scans memory and everything! It's a dumb pattern match antivirus, about as sophisticated as antiviruses back in 1998.

How else is an antivirus going to find things? Magic? I've been virus/malware free since 2007 when I switched over to ClamWin. It works, very well. If you don't like it or think it doesn't work well, use something that you like. No one is twisting your arm or holding a gun to your head.

Just shows how much you understand things so urge everyone reading this NOT to listen to you about this stuff.

And that would be you behaving poorly and vendictively. This is an option that has worked effectively for many and for over a decade. Don't care whether you like it, agree with it or think it's wackado.

Because in this case, it's better to just be using Windows Defender.

An opinion not shared by everyone. It also assumes you trust Microsoft. Some people don't and won't until they prove themselves trustworthy. No one should be expected to hold their breath waiting on that one.

It may be primitive, but it's still light years better than ClamWin.

Also an opinion not shared by everyone.

The OP asked for options and opinions. Offered my perspectives.

You don't see me blasting you for some of your notions, do you? Let it go.

 

[RejZoR]

Opinion has NOTHING to do with facts. And the facts is, ClamWin is a VERY primitive piece of software stuck in the past, more accurately, 2 decades in the past. If you think scanning memory just magically detects shit you couldn't possibly be more wrong. Ever heard of memory obfuscation/encryption? App running in memory looks like bunch of drivel to ClamWin. Unless you capture the code at correct points, toss it in emulator, run it there for it to reveal its actual code and then pattern match it. Or let it do whatever it wants to do and monitor its behavior with behavior blocker. If you honestly believe that ClamWin has any such capability, then good luck with it. Or what antiviruses mostly rely these days is machine learning and data transmission via cloud where processing is done on antivirus company servers with "big data" principles that don't look at individual binaries but classify them on many more factors beyond just the file structure (like point of origin, means of distribution, metadata attached to it, the icon used etc), users only receive snippets of data whether checked file is clean or not. Increases response times and makes a lot less burden on user system.

Antiviruses evolve because malware also evolves. ClamWin has been pretty much identical for the entire time I know about it. Which is about 2 decades. Behaving "poorly and vindictively". Yeah, because you're parroting nonsense to clueless people who will then take your idiocy as a holy grail and get their personal data and files compromised.

Also this line "How else is an antivirus going to find things? Magic?" of yours pretty much explains your ignorance to facts. No, it's not magic, it's called technology. Which ClamWin doesn't posses. At all.

If you don't want to accept facts, whatever, but don't preach that nonsense to people and put them at risk. Calling me names and my behavior "poor", whatever. It really tosses my lid off when people start out arguments with "hurt feelings" excuses. I'm stating hard facts. If they offend you, that's your problem.