What anti virus is recommended nowadays?

[jbravo]

I just rely on windows 10 security, Malwarebytes Free, and Spybot S&D, with Ublock Origin on Edge Chromium.

Is that not enough?

[RodneyYouPlonker]

Just an important point, be very careful with Malwarebytes, there has been a lot of bad stuff happening recently.  They are using their software to snoop on people's information and they are trying to gain access to people's online accounts and things by snooping on your passwords that people have saved on their computer.  Would strongly advise to tread with caution for now.  Not sure what's happening but things were fine for such a long time and now it seems that they can't even be trusted anymore.  Unless you want to get hacked into by some person who works at Malwarebytes head quarters then I would strongly avoid saving or storing passwords in your browser/s.  Just seems that as of late Malwarebytes have gone well wonkey donkey now and I would be very cautious of them.

[ill88eagle]

Just an important point, be very careful with Malwarebytes, there has been a lot of bad stuff happening recently.  They are using their software to snoop on people's information and they are trying to gain access to people's online accounts and things by snooping on your passwords that people have saved on their computer.  Would strongly advise to tread with caution for now.  Not sure what's happening but things were fine for such a long time and now it seems that they can't even be trusted anymore.  Unless you want to get hacked into by some person who works at Malwarebytes head quarters then I would strongly avoid saving or storing passwords in your browser/s.  Just seems that as of late Malwarebytes have gone well wonkey donkey now and I would be very cautious of them.

Can you provide a source or two on that? A quick google gave me this: https://restoreprivacy.com/antivirus-privacy/ <-- a lot of anti virus programs get called out for problems in this article, but malwarebytes doesn't recieve any critique...

You will excuse me my ignorance on this subject. I use linux only, so I have little to no recent experience with virus or antivirus programs (expect for win 10 deleting all my pirated softwarez).

[theSEMAR]

I just rely on windows 10 security, Malwarebytes Free, and Spybot S&D, with Ublock Origin on Edge Chromium.

Is that not enough?

yes, adblock is very helpfull for blocking many evil.
personally, i never use antivirus. even windows defender, i disable that too. computer will run faster without all of that. you must follow rules:
- never visit strange websites
- disable autorun when plug/insert storage media
- never run program other than official sources
- if forced to use pirated softwares, make sure the source is trusted or have good review from others.
note: this customized setting only suitable to computer wich used for personal use.

but...

if run business/banking, better if you have other computer to do that and install one good/best antivirus, also never use that office computer for activity related to piracy.

[RobertX]

I run AVG Antivirus Free Edition, but AVG Free is sensitive to a lot of keygens and cracks, even stuff that you can be sure that won't kill your system.

Just switch it off, if you are sure that the file in question works and safely too, and, after installation of such a file, turn the antivirus back on.

Off-topic: theSEMAR, if you don't use pirated software, do you buy your software, or do you use GPL software?

On-topic: Make sure you don't use more than one antivirus software on the same system; they might conflict with the other antivirus. Just pick your poison, or antivirus, and stick with it.

[ill88eagle]

personally, i never use antivirus. even windows defender, i disable that too. computer will run faster without all of that. you must follow rules:
- never visit strange websites
- disable autorun when plug/insert storage media
- never run program other than official sources
- if forced to use pirated softwares, make sure the source is trusted or have good review from others.

Solid advice!

I can only add: you'd save your self a whole lot of trouble by not using windows in the first place.

[waregim]

Ditto what tS said.

And to add:
AV is worthless crap that will only create more problems than the boogers themselves. The only time I was ever forced to reformat a drive was due to AV crap. I use an Emsisoft scanner on old junk but its not a daemon. But even that is not as reliable as firing up an app in a sandbox and watching what comes to life.

Always remember that the real 0-day boogers are only released after they pass all the tests on VirusTotal and like sites. Some can go undetected for years.

Bookmark this site:
http://www.blackviper.com/

Your best defense is killing off all unused services, especially anything related to Remote Desktop. And file/disk encryption. Doing so will go a long ways to making sure the boogers cant phone home, or download unusable spyware if they do.

M$ is not your friend. Replace all their crap whenever possible. Or turn it off. *Especially* their 'security center' . Win is the actual virus, the boogers just feed off its back doors. And for chrissake, turn OFF updates.

Linux was never your friend either, except its backdoors are at the NSA/Darpa level. Bash and Heartbleed were exposed, but there are probably others. Or not. After 2006 the spooks got access to the hardware CPU cores.
And gawd only knows what Lennart has infested SystemD with.

I use both Win and Lenux.

Keep all *sensitive* material on an external drive (USB HD or flashdrive) that is normally offline. Do your banking, money laundering, and your dwarf-tossing business accounting from a Live USB/DVD boot, or a Linux VM. DVD boot is most trustworthy.

If using a VM for testing for boogers keep in mind that the better boogers will not fire up if they see only 1 core.

[RobertX]

What's your choice operating system, waregim?

[RodneyYouPlonker]

If you want the best advice for Windows then just get Avira free anti virus.  It is pretty good I would use that one.  Better to be safe than sorry when using Windows.

[jbravo]

I did used to run Avira before I switched to Windows 10 so I might try it again.

And I was prompted to ask this question because I foolishly opted to allow something through my online defences and just thought 'i aint spending the next 8 hours tracking this down' and decided to just format and reinstall windows.