Whats the best free antivirus program as today?

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Have always used the free Microsoft antivirus.maybe every 5-6 months run the Microsoft safety scanner. The scanners has found a few (pups) potential unwanted programs) and deleted them. Overall no complaints with it. Still no matter how good the antivirus if the user is going to risky siteslike music and movie and porn from bit torrent and file share and dark web then it is likely no antivirus willhelp. Good surf habits go along way in keeping viruses and malware ect, out
 
I've been using Microsoft Security Essentials and now Windows Defender (on Windows 10) since ~2009 or even earlier. So I haven't had a 3rd party antivirus for a long time.

MSE is used in corporate environments. If it was significantly weaker than a 3rd party antivirus I don't think it would be used.
 
Originally Posted By: camrydriver111
I've been using Microsoft Security Essentials and now Windows Defender (on Windows 10) since ~2009 or even earlier. So I haven't had a 3rd party antivirus for a long time.

MSE is used in corporate environments. If it was significantly weaker than a 3rd party antivirus I don't think it would be used.


Never underestimate the power of "free".

When MSE was first introduced, it was reasonably effective. That changed as the product was not kept up with like its commercial competitors.

Working in health care, I don't recall ever seeing an environment just protected by MSE except perhaps a small clinic or doctor's office. I generally advise them to buy something better.

Generally, in Enterprise-size deployments I see ESET, McAfee, Symantec, Kaspersky..etc. One of the big names.

I snapped these pics a while back, it demonstrates my experience aptly:
MSEFail.jpg

ESETResults.jpg


Same computer.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: camrydriver111
I've been using Microsoft Security Essentials and now Windows Defender (on Windows 10) since ~2009 or even earlier. So I haven't had a 3rd party antivirus for a long time.

MSE is used in corporate environments. If it was significantly weaker than a 3rd party antivirus I don't think it would be used.


Never underestimate the power of "free".

When MSE was first introduced, it was reasonably effective. That changed as the product was not kept up with like its commercial competitors.

Working in health care, I don't recall ever seeing an environment just protected by MSE except perhaps a small clinic or doctor's office. I generally advise them to buy something better.

Generally, in Enterprise-size deployments I see ESET, McAfee, Symantec, Kaspersky..etc. One of the big names.

I snapped these pics a while back, it demonstrates my experience aptly:
MSEFail.jpg

ESETResults.jpg


Same computer.

looking carefully at your screen shot I noticed you did a "quick scan" with MSE, I wonder what would have happened if you did a "full scan".
 
Originally Posted By: 2004tdigls
looking carefully at your screen shot I noticed you did a "quick scan" with MSE, I wonder what would have happened if you did a "full scan".


Probably nothing. Real-time protection didn't find anything either, despite all that garbage running. ESET started finding things immediately.
 
At my company, which has thousands of employees, MSE was used.

I think it is a good basic AV. If I was into pirating software or my kids used my PC I would upgrade to something more aggressive though.
 
Originally Posted By: camrydriver111
At my company, which has thousands of employees, MSE was used.

I think it is a good basic AV. If I was into pirating software or my kids used my PC I would upgrade to something more aggressive though.


Do you do a periodic scan with ESET or one of the other free online scanners to see if anything got through? If not, I'd give it a go.
 
Originally Posted By: camrydriver111
I tried Avast, AVG, NOD32, Avira, and Kaspersky in the past and they haven't found anything.


That's good to hear
thumbsup2.gif
 
I trust OVERKILL and installed ESET. Though not free I found I can get it for 3 license at New Egg for about $20 around Thankgiving/Black Friday. Made my life easier which the free versions did not do.
 
We did some testing of all the major AV companies before we bought our endpoint solution for work.

We went with ESET. The solution from TrendMicro came in a close second, I think trend was more expensive so we went with ESET.

You can buy a home license for Trend on ebay for like $2, they email it to you right away.
 
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