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Antivirus / Security
What are some good Security suites in your experience? Anything you might recommend and why? I mean, there is always Norton, but talk about a Resource Hog in all possible ways!
I know that it isn't "hardware" per se, but I think this is the closest place where it should be placed.
I know that it isn't "hardware" per se, but I think this is the closest place where it should be placed.
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Last 4 or so years I have just stuck to Malwarebytes premium and virus and threat protection that comes with windows.
The Malwarebytes premium I mostly get from amazon, they have a 2 user 18 month paid version for about 30 bucks. Hard to find a good retailer that sells it cheaper, though, you may trust those deep discount shops that have ridiculous prices, but I don't want to mess with those places.
Both me and the wife are on-line everyday and have never had any issues over the years, though, if people are dumb enough to click links in e-mails and such...nothing will help :P
After all my years of trying various things, the above seems to be, for me anyhow, the best setup for good protection, and low system resource usage.
A lot of people swear by windows defender, and it's great for what it is, but if you wanted something more advanced there's plenty of other options, and plenty more expensive options.
Main focus of the CS staff is to try and sell you all the other stuff that came in with the new company; ID protection etc..... and you have to be pretty firm with them to keep them on track if you're trying to fix a problem.
They also 'add' a free month of ID protection without telling you and then try and charge you for the product after the month is over.
My only interactions with CS have been getting dupe charged. They put an auto renewal in place without telling anyone. It came towards the end of my year and I manually renewed like always. Then saw a 2nd charge on my bank statement. CS cleared that one up pretty fast when I called them on it (this was the 1st year the new company was there).
Next year (last year) I waited for the auto renewal, but it didn't kick in, so I manually renewed. Then the 2nd charge kicked in and I had a hell of a time getting it off as they didn't show EITHER payment.
After a month of back and forth I finally got someone without their head up their butt and she did the refund of the 2nd charge. All good and dandy you'd think, but the next month I got a 3rd charge! That didn't take quite as much back and forth until I was able to get it fixed.
And of course everytime I talked to them I had to tell them very loudly NO, I didn't want any other services.
I'm up in the air on if I'll keep them when this year is up or switch to Norton.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
No AV running, including Windows' built-in one, for about 20 years and still haven't gotten a virus. But I'm tech savvy, and normal people aren't.
Windows Defender has gotten good enough to be your main AV, but if you were going to pick a third party, I guess I'd vote for Malwarebytes.. though I don't really like what they turned into over time.
And to answer the previous post, CCleaner is something you need to be wise about using since you can clean things that reset configs and important log files and stuff; not everything should be cleaned (especially in the registry) even if you have an option for it. Revo Uninstaller has completely different functionality, and is a good tool to uninstall things with to make sure every trace of something is gone (primarily if you will never reinstall it).
As a self-declared "tech savvy" user you surely know that downloaded stuff is only a fairly small part of what's out there and what AVs actually watch out for. There is close to zero probability of someone taking no precaution, visiting all kinds of websites and not getting something unwanted as a result. For example, I have my doubts that a random mmorpg.com poster is Mark Russinovich level savvy and even he got unwanted stuff on his PC - and the rest of the Sony rootkit scandal is history. Even big and genuine sites can be compromised (e.g. via third party ads), as has already happened several times.
Unless you are very strict about your use of the internet and have your browser set to a very restrictive mode (and probably running it all in a virtual machine anyway), without using any form of AV protection it's only a question of time when your PC will get infected. In 99% of cases you will not notice anything. Malware these days is not designed the way it was done 20 years ago, for bragging, trolling or similar purposes. It is designed not to be noticed and run in the background as long as possible (except for ransomware, of course). Claiming that you don't use any AV and have not seen any virus in 20 years can mean just two things: either you are extremely cautious and lucky, or you have been infected ages ago, you just don't know it. Scanning downloaded stuff through virustotal is such a minuscule part of malware protection, it's hard to take any such claims seriously. It's also not something you can do automatically and constantly for every accessed object, is it.
On a general note: as for Windows Defender, while it is now incomparably better than its earlier versions, it still has its weaknesses. It is probably completely fine for standard users and activity, but if you are visiting and doing stuff that you don't trust, it's not the best. WD has had many problems with ransomware, for example. It also seems to do less well without internet connection, it apparently relies too heavily on cloud connection. So if your average malware blocks your connection, WD has a decent chance to miss it. WD is also generally slower and can run into interesting problems, although I don't expect it would be a standard scenario. Unless you are really unlucky with several threat detections in parallel. WD also used to have a fatal problem, no idea if it has been fixed or not.
Depending on your PC and how you use it, I would very much advise getting a good 3rd party security suite, the traditional one like Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Eset, F-secure, AVG / Avast, etc. are generally safe bets.
As a side note, John Hammond runs a very good channel about security and malware, not specifically related to AV, but it's fun to watch, especially seeing this topic from the other side - 'how to beat the security and get inside'.
Never tested it myself, but I've always heard it was a very good choice. Unless something dramatic has happened, that should still be the case.
Here you can see it in action, seems solid:
In the end, security will always be a combination of behaviour and technology. If you neglect either one, you have a good chance of running into problems.
Of course, you can never be sure against a targeted and determined attack, but for regular users that is usually not a consideration. Unless your ex is after you, that is.
Initially it started as a scanning software that was made to remove some of the harder to remove malware.
These days it's pretty similar to most other protection applications. But it depends on what you're looking for and how much you want to spend.
If you're going to start spending on protection though, and you want something more comprehensive, bitdefenders suite is much better than malwarebytes. It includes a lot of additional features, like webcam protection, a firewall, a file shredder, and a password manager, plus some other stuff.
The free version also offers ransomware protection where most other options don't.
But it all depends on what you're looking for.
Nothing is 100%.
This is also worth pointing out: many security suites offer discounts for license renewals. So after a while the expense becomes lower than the initial license fee. I am currently using Eset Internet Security since when my previous license was running out, they offered me a 30-40% discount for the renewal. So it costs me about 10-15 euros per year now, which I would say is a pretty good investment for something as impactful (and possibly digital-life-saving) as cybersecurity. I'm sure other vendors offer similar benefits.
Personally, I am very curious about Kaspersky. Impressive AV-Comparatives results, excellent performance and detection... Tried a free version in the past and it was great, so I might switch to it after my current one expires at the end of next year. We'll see...
Personally, I use Eset Security Suite and Windows Defender. The Defender Beta has some ID theft protection. It's also good to have 2 different types of Anti-virus.