Decent free antivirus?

[sepheronx]

I use Kaspersky free. Works fine for me and I rarely notice it.

 

[hat]

Well so far I haven't heard any complaints about bitdefender. I might run that and mbam in the future or get a mbam license and do that, eventually.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I use Kaspersky free. Works fine for me and I rarely notice it.

I've got a few clients that like Kaspersky. Some people are freaked out by the drama of last year. For those that are not fans of ClamWin and want realtime protection, I've been recommending Comodo. They have a consistently good track-record and their firewall is very good.

 

[RejZoR]

Comodo is meh. If you use their Auto Sandbox (Containment) it's pretty good, but just AV alone is pretty basic. Still far far better than ClamWin though.

Kaspersky Free is also a very good option. Lacks System Watcher (behavior blocker), but still. The drama about Russians spying is such manufactured nonsense it's unbelievable. NSA's contractor was caught with hack tools by Kaspersky and people somehow blame Russians. That's like catching a shoplifter and then blaming the shop owner for it. That's the situation here. So, forget about that and just use Kaspersky if you like it. Detection wise it has always been among the best.

 

[lexluthermiester]

it's unbelievable.

I don't believe it either, but it freaked people out.

The advantage Comodo has is their very good firewall(which fully replaces the builtin Windows firewall). If malware and virii can't get in, infections possible are minimized. Then the AV takes over and uses their heuristics engine, which is excellent, to find anything really squirrely. Kaspersky doesn't have that.

 

[RejZoR]

Kaspersky does have that. Their file heuristics are pretty advanced, especially if you set them to High for each protective module. They are very accurate and rarely do false positives. Comodo heuristics are quite trigger happy. I guess it's why they disabled them out of the box now.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Kaspersky does have that.

Sorry, was referring to the firewall.

Comodo heuristics are quite trigger happy.

False positive rates are less than .2%. Not what I would call trigger happy..

I guess it's why they disabled them out of the box now.

Where did you read that? Installed it yesterday on a client PC and the heuristics are not disabled.

 

[RejZoR]

I don't know where you got that number... What I do know is that using High heuristics with Comodo is almost impossible to use as it'll flag almost any tool or tweak app. They had heuristics set to Low in older versions which was very bearable with rare FP's and in recent version 10, heuristics are entirely disabled. Sensitivity setting is still there, but disabled by default. How do I know that, I'm following Comodo development since early versions of 1.0...

 

[lexluthermiester]

I don't know where you got that number...

It was a review site that did an AV comparison. Can't remember and can't find it or I'd link it here.

What I do know is that using High heuristics with Comodo is almost impossible to use as it'll flag almost any tool or tweak app.

False positives are fairly rare as of late as CAV checks scanned files against Comodo's DB of known safe files.

They had heuristics set to Low in older versions which was very bearable with rare FP's and in recent version 10, heuristics are entirely disabled. Sensitivity setting is still there, but disabled by default.

I literally, out of curiosity, just downloaded and tested an installation, complete defaults. It's enabled and working fine.

 

[micropage7]

i've run avast for years and it's pretty good for free

 

[RejZoR]

No it's not. File heuristics are NOT enabled by default.

 

[lexluthermiester]

No it's not. File heuristics are NOT enabled by default.

Ok, if you say so.

 

[RejZoR]

No, I'm saying so because I for a fact know so. Anyone who can run Comodo can see it.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Again Bitdefender with MBAM and done. Zero worries and better than everything else mentioned.

 

[Apocalypsee]

I chimed in on nearly two months old thread since I got a nasty virus last night that installs tons of nasty stuff.

First I tried Avira. It only get around 17 threats. After cleaning it still doesn't feel right and there is still CPU miner right on task manager. Such pile of garbage so I uninstalled it. Used to trust Avira like 7 years ago. It used 2GB of storage and did nearly nothing. A waste of harddrive space.

Then I installed AVG and it's a bit better. It got about 80 threats of various stuff. After initial scanning it even scan during bootup before Windows starts. Everything seems fine but one thing persist that Windows explorer occasionally goes to 30% CPU usage for no reason. Process Explorer didn't find anything so I think it isn't over yet.

Quick Google suggest to use Malwarebytes so I did. And holy cow it detects 252 threats!!! How come Avira and AVG miss that much?

 

[theFOoL]

Malwarebytes is known to only catch malware and not viruses. I just use Defender and have had no issues

 

[BiggieShady]

Malwarebytes is known to only catch malware and not viruses.

Come on seriously, you make it look like viruses are not malware. Stop spreading misinformation because ...

And holy cow it detects 252 threats!!!

... mbam detects viruses but also the whole galaxy of pup-s (potentially unwanted program such as worthless adware browser toolbars)

 

[Bill_Bright]

Malwarebytes is known to only catch malware and not viruses.

That's not true at all! And for the record, "malware" is a general, over all term for all malicious software, to include worms, Trojans, rootkits, and viruses and more.

It is a misconception to categorize and assume viruses are not malware.

The most likely Malwarebytes detected so many more threats than the other programs is because Malwarebytes includes PUPs (potentially unwanted programs) in that list but it is important to understand potentially unwanted is not the same as definitely unwanted.

Edit add: BiggieShady beat me too it, but worth repeating so I'll keep my post there.

 

[BiggieShady]

@Bill_Bright nice sync, on both points

 

[Space Lynx]

I have no idea what is going on here, just want to chime in that I have malwarebytes lifetime license, got it for $15 many moons ago, and it was the best decision I ever made. its amazing to me how many things it catches. its all i use now

 

[enxo218]

used to use avg free, it was unintrusive and resource friendly until 2016 when u needed accounts and passwords on it and had a persistent issue of being unable to get past windows login screen(removing it was the solution) so just switched to common sense...the technical version and have yet to be disappointed, thats my recommendation

 

[jboydgolfer]

I have no idea what is going on here, just want to chime in that I have malwarebytes lifetime license, got it for $15 many moons ago, and it was the best decision I ever made. its amazing to me how many things it catches. its all i use now

Malwarebytes is great ,but sadly they ended the lifetime key option. Nowadays it's $40 for three PCs for one year , if you're lucky you can make your purchase when there's a sale and get it for $25. It used to be that you could just type in Malwarebytes key in YouTube and search through and find a million keys that would work ,but that was before they became more popular, now it's pretty much pay or run the free version. Their support is still awful though and I paid for it for a few years but after dealing with them for a few months to try to figure out a problem I was having on one of my devices I don't think I'm going to pay them any longer. Windows defender and the free version work perfectly fine

 

[Vayra86]

Still rocking WIndows Defender and zero issues, including no false positives (from you-know-what-can-do-that) and I do quite a few installs and uninstalls along with some more serious work on the PC. Back in the Windows 7 days I used several different free AV's and they all had their annoying quirks. WD has none and its bundled with the OS for free, heck it doesn't even update separately.

Travel light, I like it. When I feel uneasy I manually run something else to fit the occasion, usually something like HitmanPro or antimalwarebytes. Call it a second opinion

 

[John Naylor]

AV Test site continually puts Kaspersky and BitDefender at the top.... however, BD has gone rcently gone Norton like and the if you use a site license or more than 1 box, it's a real PITA.

In most recent testing ... Windows Home User

https://www.av-test.org/en/antiviru...18/bitdefender-internet-security-22.0-180591/
BitDefender scored 6.0 / 6.0 / 5.0 - 100% in both categories for detection last 2 tests and 9 false positives

https://www.av-test.org/en/antiviru.../kaspersky-lab-internet-security-18.0-180557/
Kaspersky scored 6.0 / 6.0 / 6.0 - 100% in both categories for detection last 2 tests and 0 false positives

https://www.av-test.org/en/antiviru...18/microsoft-security-essentials-4.10-180547/
Microsoft Security Essentials scored 6.0 / 5.5 / 6.0 - 100 % in both categories for detection but a decent performance hit

Others:

Avast Free - 6.0 / 5.5 / 5.5
AVG - 6.0 / 5.5 / 5.5
Norton - 6.0 / 6.0 / 5.5
Tend Mico - 6.0 / 6.0 / 6.0

 

[Bill_Bright]

In most recent testing ... Windows Home User

IMO, this is a misrepresentation because those links go to Windows 7, a 9 year old OS where mainstream support ended over 3 years ago. It does not tell the whole story.

Check out the most recent AV-Tests for Windows 10 and click on the most important "Protection" column header to sort to see where the various products lead. No doubt some will be surprised to see how some products do, and how poorly their product of choice did.

But to that, it is important to understand that having the top rated product does NOT mean you are unsafe if you use a lower rated product.

It is important is to use a product that scores well, no argument there. But it is more important to keep Windows and your security current, and avoid being "click-happy" on unsolicited downloads, links attachments, and popups.