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Comment by Slaul | Hacker News Reader

I haven't used AVG or Avast in years. Personally, I have found that Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes antimalware has been sufficient for me.

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Yes, that seems to be a good combo, using the same.

Both AVG and Avast have really annoying upselling techniques, even when you already bought the product there are always addons they are trying to promote. Some popups and notifications are as annoying as the ones Microsoft use to push Windows 10 updates.

The worst sound ever made by a computer: http://youtu.be/MfSfpZooiu0

And of course it always plays right after you turn the volume on your speakers or 'phones up.

I used to use MSE as it was so light, but it seems to be awful.

https://www.av-test.org/en/compare-manufacturer-results/

I'm quite skeptical about "independent" AV test sites like these, especially when they come to the conclusion that solutions that would essentially make the AV industry obsolete are inferior ("AV industry" meaning third-party AV solutions in this context). There's a big incentive for them to come to that conclusion, otherwise they'd have no reason to exist any further.

Relevant quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” (Upton Sinclair)

I don't think you'll find anyone, paid or otherwise, who would say MSE performs better than commercial solutions. It's weighted in favor of better solutions, obviously, but MSE is pretty much the baseline of the industry.

No doubt about it. The question is if it's worth it. Yes there is a risk - but a population that largely accepts risk from unhealthy eating or smoking should IMHO not be all that worried about the in comparison about the (a 2nd IMHO) small increase in risk when using MSE compared to an annoying product. Also, ones own behavior, like how do you handle or react to email attachments, how up-to-date do you keep your system, what websites do you visit (a 3rd IMHO) probably has a larger impact than your choice of anti-virus software.

In addition, if the anti-virus software annoys users enough they soon start ignoring its popups and always just click them away, so that they end up missing actual alerts.

In addition to those, there is also a risk that the 3rd party AV solutions themselves have security holes. I know Google Project Zero has found a few issues that make you question whether you are not opening yourself up to worse attacks by using these products than you would by not using them.

For general purpose computers (like my wifes Surface Pro, mom's Lenovo Yoga, aunt's Dell desktop) Sophos Home works great and having central management from a web portal makes keeping tabs on my families computers easy, did I mention it's free?

I stick with Windows 10's built in Windows Defender on my beefy gaming rig though, virtually anything 'better' (Defender works fine for what I need it for, but it's still very basic protection) than it tends to bog my system down too much when playing games (one thing that makes me consider purchasing NOD32 for my system again, lightweight and game mode).

Eugene Kaspersky isn't too fond of AV-Test.

https://eugene.kaspersky.com/2013/05/09/av-test-certificatio...

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