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Madza
Madza Subscriber

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Do you use any antivirus, anti-malware software?

I have AVG and Malwarebytes installed from ages ago, tho I rarely run them. They have become bloated since I installed them and nowadays are often pushed via other software set-up wizards.

Furthermore, I have no idea how effective the scanning of free versions even is, and is it worth keeping them around.

Do you use any antivirus, anti-malware software these days and, if so, what would you recommend from personal experience?

Top comments (17)

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akahayeaer profile image
Akhyr M

Hi there, i recommend Avira...personally i use Avira antivirus on my main PC and even though it comes with bloat i uninstall most of it and keep only the Antivirus software. Seems to work reliably and detects malware if i accidentally do an oopsie. Usually if i know im infected i immediately install Malwarebytes, Emsisoft, Rogue Killer, and AdwCleaner. thats to thoroughly remove unwanted programs and potential rootkits hidden PuP etc... then i uninstall it when i know my pc is already clean....On my other lower end PC i only use Windows Defender and i set it up for maximum protection using ConfigureDefender app by AndyFul on GitHub. Seems to be working fine on Windows 10 Enterprise. My main PC Has i5 6200u and doesnt get slowed down by Avira but my slower PC that only has Celeron n3060 i only use Windows Defender, i have tried installing Avira on it but without it or other 3rd party antivirus the PC seems to run significantly faster. I also watch the pc security channel that tries maximum security setup on windows defender using configure defender, on their test the setup can make the pc far safer than default even though there will be a risk of getting false positives.

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sami_hd profile image
Sami

I haven't used avira since 2013. I miss those days. Does the umbrella still closes when the software is deactivated?

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akahayeaer profile image
Akhyr M

yes, it apparently still does. but new updates to the program seems to be removing the luke filewalker, cant seem to find it anywhere. kinda dissapointed i prefer the old look of the app that i can customize to what i want. othewise the performance impact seems minimal on a system running with SSD and 8GB of ram. i have running safer apps and programs as of lately so i rarely even use it for scanning and i just let it run on the background.

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dorshinar profile image
Dor Shinar • Edited

I've recently switched from Windows to Mac for work, and now I don't use an antivirus.

When I had my windows laptop I used Windows Defender, primarily because it was free and positively regarded in general.

I focus on only downloading apps I trust (with an emphasis on open source), and use MFA when ever possible, and so far this has proved effective for me.

I also backup important files to Google Drive, so ransom based attacks will have little effect on me.

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_garybell profile image
Gary Bell

My work laptop (Windows) has Webroot installed. It's part of the company policy to have.

My personal laptop only runs Ubuntu, and I've not put antivirus or malware detection software on. I really should look into it just as a precaution, but I'm aware it also can bring a false sense of security

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

On ubuntu you can just sudo apt install clamav clamav-daemon, or just clamav if you don't want it running in the background :D

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joro550 profile image
Mark Davies

How do you find WebRoot? I have it installed on personal machine and find it pretty unobtrusive

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_garybell profile image
Gary Bell

I don't even notice it's there. I only know it's there because I signed the renewals at work and checked the version we had.

It never seems to slow anything down.

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mikenikles profile image
Mike

Not since 2000 :-). That's when I switched to Mac and two years ago to a Chromebook with all my development happening in the cloud (mikenikles.com/blog/why-i-use-a-cl...).

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sfiquet profile image
Sylvie Fiquet

I use Sophos. It runs in the background and occasionally reports about trojans and malware in junk mail.

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arjunnarain profile image
Arjun Narain

I recently used MalwareBytes. It managed to catch a backdoor for Bitcoin Mining. Surprisingly, Kaspersky gave a clean report. Made me keep using MalwareBytes.

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madeelahsan profile image
M Adeel Ahsan

using eset nod32 internet security. Using nod32 for years now. The experience is so far really smooth it does not use much system resource runs quietly in the background

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aghost7 profile image
Jonathan Boudreau

An anti-virus might be useful for those that are less tech-savvy, but I'd expect a developer to not really need it. Anti-viruses aren't effective at detecting malware from what I've seen either. The mandated anti-virus at my job wasn't able to detect the flatmap-stream malware for example.

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louislow profile image
Louis Low

Been too long I never had any antivirus or antimalware on any of my systems. Which gave me a feeling that this kind of software never existed, or like, it was the year 1900 antiques.

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sukhwant_mehmi profile image
Sukhwant

Eset internet security

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