Antivirus software comparison - November 2023

Hoping ESET has a sale Cyber Monday because they’re one of the best and it works with all of my OSes: Linux, MacOS, Windows.
 
Windows defender and unlock origin is our business antivirus combo. We also do not give any users admin right to their local PC

Holding thumbs, no virus breakouts across about 500 users in the last 3 years.
 
Anti-virus software is almost as annoying as talking printing drivers.

Anti-virus should be invisible until there is a virus. But all lean and mean software packages migrate to a circus of themeing and intrusiveness.

I loved Avira.I paid for the proper version. But at some point they decided to bombard me with "warnings" that could only be solved by buying another of their products. So uninstalled it.

I installed BitDefender and it decided that it should install its own root certificate, and mask the certificates of websites INCLUDING ones with invalid certificates. I uninstalled ASAP because you don't want random root certificates in your machine.

I haven't looked at AVG in the while. Does it still make sounds? And do annoying pop-ups to indicate activity?

Truely anti-viruses are almost as bad as viruses themselves.
 
konfab said:
He is the president the US needed, but sadly will never get.
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Paranoid Drug-huffing absolutely not criminally insane hitman-hiring mcafee? Jesus you just want the world to burn don't you
 
Johand said:
I haven't looked at AVG in the while. Does it still make sounds? And do annoying pop-ups to indicate activity?
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Avast/AVG/Avira are all Norton owned and have a similar model of upsales to the nines
Personally i've found kaspersky to be more the "Pet Dog" antivirus,protects you from most things,can be trained to be less annoying
 
If people want to pay for something I stick woth Eset and Kaspersky it is slightly better than Windows Security. Intermediate level I stick with Panda AD360. I don't really deal with higher levels.
 
Best AV is no anti virus. At least for desktop users.

Don't use a root account (admin), which is what windows lets you do by default on install. Install you windows offline to bypass online windows acc, customise your settings, create standard user, logout and login with your standard user which now becomes your main account. Now just like linux, every time you need to do something important/serious, you need a password, not a prompt. Name you admin acc something like "kids" and your user acc "admin"

Viruses can't auto run on a standard user, unless of course you give it access. Your windows becomes snappier and "silent", because you remove its rights to do lots of schit.

Delete the default admin account (not yours), or at the very least put a password on it. Windows by default set up an extra admin account (its disabled by default)...with no password. God only knows why it needs to do that. Many people don't even know about it.. It will try to enable it, after an update if it can't use your admin acc.

Don't be a fool. Don't go around clicking on everything or visit dodgy sites.

Using an AV is like having a constant headache, and everybody's bragging about their brand of pain pills they use. Instead, find the cause for the headache, don't do that, and the headache is gone...no treatment, no pills...no anti virus.
 
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JustAsk said:
Best AV is no anti virus. At least for desktop users.

Don't use a root account (admin), which is what windows lets you do by default on install. Install you windows offline to bypass online windows acc, customise your settings, create standard user, logout and login with your standard user which now becomes your main account. Now just like linux, every time you need to do something important/serious, you need a password, not a prompt. Name you admin acc something like "kids" and your user acc "admin"

Viruses can't auto run on a standard user, unless of course you don't give it access. Your windows becomes snappier and "silent", because you remove its rights to do lots of schit.

Delete the default admin account (not yours), or at the very least put a password on it. Windows by default set up an extra admin account (its disabled by default)...with no password. God only knows why it needs to do that. Many people don't even know about it.. It will try to enable it, after an update if it can't use your admin acc.

Don't be a fool. Don't go around clicking on everything or visit dodgy sites.

Using an AV is like having a constant headache, and everybody's bragging about their brand of pain pills they use. Instead, find the cause for the headache, don't do that, and the headache is gone...no treatment, no pills...no anti virus.
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This is the worst advice I’ve read on this forum all year.
 
PsyWulf said:
Paranoid Drug-huffing absolutely not criminally insane hitman-hiring mcafee? Jesus you just want the world to burn don't you
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I thought people would have learned their lesson with the gold toilet, spray-tan, election sore loser, tax dodging, state secret epenis weiding criminal.
 
NikeXT said:
This is the worst advice I’ve read on this forum all year.
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Man I dunno,it's been a long year and we're not done yet. This is like when Gollum was Worst Game of the Year and King Kong said Hold My Jpeg
 
Jan said:
Most popular antivirus software in South Africa — price and feature comparison

Antivirus software is critical to protect yourself online, and the protection offered natively by operating systems like MacOS and Windows isn't always enough.

According to SourceForge, Kaspersky Antivirus, AVG Internet Security, Norton 360, Malwarebytes, and ESET NOD32 Antivirus are among the most popular antivirus products in Africa.
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MyBB peddling BS again? This site is turning more terrible by the day.
arstechnica.com

It might be time to stop using antivirus

Update your software and OS regularly instead, practice skeptical computing.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
Former Firefox developer Robert O'Callahan, now a free agent and safe from the PR tentacles of his corporate overlord, says that antivirus software is terrible, AV vendors are terrible, and that you should uninstall your antivirus software immediately—unless you use Microsoft's Windows Defender, which is apparently okay.

A couple of months back, Justin Schuh, Google Chrome's security chief, and indeed one of the world's top infosec bods, said that antivirus software is "my single biggest impediment to shipping a secure browser." Further down the thread he explains that meddling AV software delayed Win32 Flash sandboxing "for over a year" and that further sandboxing efforts are still on hold due to AV. The man-in-the-middle nature of antivirus also causes a stream of TLS (transport layer security) errors, says Schuh, which in turn breaks some elements of HTTPS/HSTS.
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NikeXT said:
This is the worst advice I’ve read on this forum all year.
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I disagree.

Most security gains are to be had through permission limitation.

Viruses are not magic. For the most part, they can only modify the system as far as the user would be able to.

This is bourne out in server environments, where antivirus is exceptionally rare.

There are other methods to improve security without the overhead associated with AV software that is built into windows. Only allowing signed code execution and DNS based filtering (smartsceen) are two examples.

Any malware that can breach those defences will need to be a 0-day, which AV software is not likely to be able to counter.
 
www.av-comparatives.org

Real-World Protection Test July-August 2023 - Factsheet

New Consumer Real-World Protection Factsheet Results for July-August 2023 released!
www.av-comparatives.org www.av-comparatives.org

www.av-comparatives.org

Malware Protection Test September 2023

The Malware Protection Test September 2023 assesses program’s ability to protect a system against malicious files before, during or after execution.
www.av-comparatives.org www.av-comparatives.org

www.av-comparatives.org

Performance Test October 2023

AV-Comparatives released the Performance Test report October 2023 for consumer security products under Microsoft Windows 10.
www.av-comparatives.org www.av-comparatives.org

Since Windows 10, I've only used Defender.
Before that, it was ESET. (Win7)
Before that, it was Avira. (WinXP)
 
Sapphiron said:
I disagree.

Most security gains are to be had through permission limitation.

Viruses are not magic. For the most part, they can only modify the system as far as the user would be able to.

This is bourne out in server environments, where antivirus is exceptionally rare.

There are other methods to improve security without the overhead associated with AV software that is built into windows. Only allowing signed code execution and DNS based filtering (smartsceen) are two examples.

Any malware that can breach those defences will need to be a 0-day, which AV software is not likely to be able to counter.
Click to expand...
While that makes some sense, it sounds like a major PITA for a tiny bit of extra security. Defender really isn’t intrusive enough to warrant that much fuss. I just asked my dad about it and he says to ask you if you miss Vista’s UAC, whatever that is about, lol.

Also chatGPT tells me that antivirus catches only 28% of zero day exploits, which sounds better than zero?
 
NikeXT said:
While that makes some sense, it sounds like a major PITA for a tiny bit of extra security. Defender really isn’t intrusive enough to warrant that much fuss. I just asked my dad about it and he says to ask you if you miss Vista’s UAC, whatever that is about, lol.

Also chatGPT tells me that antivirus catches only 28% of zero day exploits, which sounds better than zero?
Click to expand...
 
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