What's the best anti-virus/anti-malware program?

[Fred_2004]

Kaspersky anti-virus and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for malware.

 

[VICE]

Thanks for your post. What exactly is CCE and why do you recommend it?

J.

Pardon me Mademoiselle, I didn't read the OP and thought this was just a random thread.

CCE is good for detecting malware missed by other anti-virus, it's my last line of defense and the one that made me realize how 99% of Firefox add-on has malicious content.

Be aware though, CCE is the medicine, not the condom.

 

[VICE]

...crashes or any other strangeness, which I had too often with Norton.

Probably because it's too busy sending out your PC content to the FBI.

 

[PoetJC]

Pardon me Mademoiselle, I didn't read the OP and thought this was just a random thread.

CCE is good for detecting malware missed by other anti-virus, it's my last line of defense and the one that made me realize how 99% of Firefox add-on has malicious content.

Be aware though, CCE is the medicine, not the condom.

Condoms?? Eh. Who needs them
At this point- I'm pretty sure the medicine will come in handy. TBH. I think the issue I've recently experienced with my PC is not at all a Windows 10 issue. I believe it's nasty malware of some ridiculous sort. I uninstalled Bitdefender an hour ago in safe mode in preparation for reinstalling Windows .... I rebooted back in normal mode and Chrome opened up. I had message popups alerting that 4 extensions need to access additional permissions. UGH!

Time for medicine indeed!! Gonna checkout CCE right now!
Thanks.

J.

 

[VICE]

Three things:

1. You will have better chance getting your PC fixed if you visit http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/
The select users there will help you administer the right medicines step by step (they'll ask you to download and run specific identification and removal tools similar to CCE).
2. Norton white-listing FBI's keylogger is a fact, it's not something that I am paranoid about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Internet_Security (under the heading FBI cooperation)
3. Major anti-virus companies are well known as government collaborators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Lantern_(software) (under the heading Antivirus vendor cooperation)

 

[VICE]

I use sophos as i managed to get it for free for life, when I was working in an I.T. dept.

Well, while at it, The Intercept has a glowing remark for the company;

Another way the NSA targets foreign anti-virus companies appears to be to monitor their email traffic for reports of new vulnerabilities and malware. A 2010 presentation on “Project CAMBERDADA” shows the content of an email flagging a malware file, which was sent to various anti-virus companies by François Picard of the Montréal-based consulting and web hosting company NewRoma. The presentation of the email suggests that the NSA is reading such messages to discover new flaws in anti-virus software.

The Project CAMBERDADA presentation lists 23 additional AV companies from all over the world under “More Targets!” Those companies include Check Point software, a pioneering maker of corporate firewalls based Israel, whose government is a U.S. ally. Notably omitted are the American anti-virus brands McAfee and Symantec [Ed: Norton] and the British company Sophos.

 

[batpool52!]

Used ESET for like 7 years or something then tried moving to BitDefender which had support team that took ages to respond. Moved to Kaspersky just to see how it works and if I can replace it with ESET. Kaspersky is somewhat more paranoid conscious than ESET.

 

[Robust]

Windows 10 huh.

Not many recommend this but I've taken a few courses in malware removal and system security. All the experts recommend ESET or Kaspersky - mostly ESET. I've hyperlinked the UK ESET, or you can use http://www.eset.com/ for international country selection. It has a large database of malware and works rather independently. It's definitely the best one around. All the people that recommended it are either old and experienced and some are even Microsoft MVPs (https://mvp.microsoft.com/).

So if I had to advise anything, from both personal experience and education, I'd say go with ESET. They're a pretty big name but every other household probably doesn't hear of them. At least in the UK, names such as Kaspersky, McAfee and Norton are popular, mostly because they have a lot to invest into marketing. ESET invests in security. Alternatively, like I said, Kaspersky isn't a bad choice either.

The thing to remember about anti-virus software in general is what's good today will inevitably be not so good tomorrow. http://www.av-comparatives.org/summary-reports/ is probably one of the best places to look if you need a recommendation.

Problem with those sites... they're all paid to give good, high reviews to the AVs that buy them out. Same goes for websites like toptenreviews.com and "specialised" AV review sites. ESET updates its database every few hours with new threats, sometimes even more often. They publish updates for you to fetch very quickly.

McAfee is one I would strongly not recommend. Bitdefender isn't shabby either, but I'd choose one of the two I listed above, personally.

Additionally, your best bet at staying safe online is common sense. An AV will help, but for quite some time I never even used one. It just boiled down to common sense. Afterwards, when I started having to deal with a wide variety of customers, some of which tried ways to infect me, I went down the ESET route. It's a solid software.

Don't click links you're not familiar with. Always keep programs up to date. If you have Java or Flash or Adobe Reader installed and don't use it, uninstall them. Basic security rules, really. But in this day and age, I wouldn't not go without a solid AV.

 

[Robust]

BTW, things like CCE and MBAM are antimalwares, not antiviruses. There's quite a difference. You want an antivirus. Antimalwares are usually used by experts that disinfect a computer after a virus has made multiple points of infection, to where an AV usually isn't smart enough to tidy it all up. There are places that do it for free, give you a check and help analyse your computer. They're pretty darn qualified too. Very nice, actually - some people still work for "the wider good". MBAM is good for a quick scan every now and then. No need to go for the pro version, the free version is all you need.

 

[VICE]

That's why I warned J that CCE is the medicine, not the condom and advised her to seek help at http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/.

 

[Danielx64]

If you find the link a bit later - be sure to post it please.
I'm very curious about it, as I downloaded Avast a few days ago. Seemed to be a decent program, only the security browser didn't actually open a security browser. I clicked the Security browser link in the taskbar icon and it opened Google Chrome

J.

Here's that link: http://news.thewindowsclub.com/avast-reprimanded-google-weakening-browser-security-81984/ and http://news.thewindowsclub.com/chromodo-web-browser-anything-secure-says-google-81951/

 

[Alpha1]

Bitdefender works well but is a resource hog. 300MB process lol!
Norton has been so bad for years that I consider it a virus. However, it has greatly improved from pure rubbish to ok quality. But who knows what next years edition will do to your computer.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Problem with those sites... they're all paid to give good, high reviews to the AVs that buy them out.

I very much doubt that's the case here, they are supported in the main by academic institutions and the Austrian government.

 

[LeadCrow]

I very much doubt that's the case here, they are supported in the main by academic institutions and the Austrian government.

That's not a guarantee of honestly, it just implies it.

It's still generally alright in its procedures. Nothing really misleading, although there may be biases leaking into the testing procedures that affect the results assigned (like in the selection of samples, exclusion of the worst infection types that are found and cleaned by some AVs and whose detection and cleanup by every other suite fails). I think they focus too much in testing on minute differences for factors that no longer make the most crucial difference. Every year we keep getting a negligible deviation of last year's result.

 

[Testing123]

Re: GData
I'd never heard of it before s.molinari mentioned it. Here's a (Jul 3, 2014 - rather old by internet security standards) video by the PC Security Channel testing out the 2015 version of GData.

Note 1: The gentleman that does the videos on this channel I believe works for EMSISOFT (please correct me if I'm wrong). Also, since it's now brought up, you might want to give emsisoft a looksee. It's supposed to be good as well.

Note 2: I don't work for any of the companies mentioned in this post. I've not used GData at all, but I have run the free version of EMSISOFT.

 

[Echo]

I use Microsoft Essentials, seems pretty good to me, and don't notice any lag.

 

[zappaDPJ]

I use Microsoft Essentials, seems pretty good to me, and don't notice any lag.

I used it for a number of years when it was highly rated but it's detection rate compared to other products plummeted. In fact I believe a couple of years ago it had the worst malware detection rate of any anti-virus product, failing to detect around 10% of known threats.

 

[PoetJC]

I was gonna give ESET a whirl, but have thoroughly appreciated Kaspersky Internet Security, paired with Malwarebytes.
On VICE's recommendation - I also downloaded CCE and it found a couple issues even on my new Windows 10 install. It took several hours to run - but I haven't had many issues since running it. So nice to be back online = now time to get to work

J.

 

[Solidus]

Best thing you can do is browse smart with extensions like Ghostery and NoScript.

 

[s.molinari]

Testing123 - I just ran Malwarebytes Anti-Malware with my up-to-date version of G-Data and the false positive the guy in the video got with running Anti-Malware didn't happen on my system. So it seems G-Data fixed that issue. I also had a clear report concerning malware. Nothing on my system.

Scott