I have been using Emisoft but considering using a different program when my subscription expires. I am considering either Xfinity provided Norton Security or free Avast or free AVG. Avast and AVG seem to be exactly the same as far as protection. Which has more intrusive advertising or pop-ups or other messages encouraging you to buy the paid programs of each? Which is more annoying?
Since they are now owned by the same company, that makes sense. https://blog.avast.com/avast-and-avg-become-one You did not say what version of Windows you are using. If W8 or W10, why not use Windows Defender? Despite what some may want you to believe, WD is a very capable anti-malware solution. I use it on all my systems. It is not intrusive, has no popops or other messages encouraging you to buy anything. See the latest AVTest report and click on the all important "Protection" tab to sort on that field and note that Windows Defender is tied with several others with the top score of "6" and received a "Top Product" certification from the labs. If you don't like it, you can always go for a 3rd product solution which most likely will try to get you to buy their paid product. BTW, regardless our primary solution of choice, we should always have a secondary solution for on-demand scanning. This is to verify our primary scanner, or we as users and always the weakest link in security, didn't let something slip by. I generally recommend Malwarebytes for that. And on all six systems we have here, Malwarebytes has never found where Windows Defender let something malicious slip by.
Thanks. I have Windows 10. Per published tests, Windows Defender appears to offer good protection. I used it for a few weeks about a yea ago. I likely would have cointinued to use it but I stopped using it after a short time, after it had a snafu that either cause it to no longer update or caused it to it to state it was out of date. I got warnings it was out of date and an a SFC scan indicated some Windows Defender related files were corrupt and SFC could not fix them. Microsoft acknowledge the problem* and many security related and PC related sites stated it was a widespread problem. At the time of the problem, Microsoft, while acknowledging the problem, offered no estimate date for fix. I used it for a couple of more days but those out of date warnings persisted and it did not appear it was updating. I assume that problem was fixed, but it gave me pause against trying Windows Defender again since you would think being the developer of the O/S, Windows would be the last company to get its updating module out of whack with the O/S, so I did not feel comfortable that it, or another widespread problem, would not happen again. *https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-flags-windows-defender-ps-files-as-corrupted
Since Avast bought AVG it now uses the Avast definitions so there is little to choose between them. Both are just as happy to sell your data to 3rd parties. However if you want decent free AV you should really look at either Avira or Bitdefender. Both are consistently better performers.
Many years ago, Bitdefender free used to be barebones so I never considered it but based on its own website comparison, the free version seems it is much closer to the paid Bitdefender as far as protection goes - the paid has many non-core security related features such as a secure browser, VPN, file shredding and other non-core protection things such as working with android and Apple phones. Is that right, the free version is more complex than it used to be? Close to main as far as anti-malware? Does it have 0-day prevention/behavior blocking components now?
As far as I know the protection you get with paid or pro bitdefender is equal if you mean the core reason for an AV. The extra stuff may count towards overall protection, but won't make a difference to detection and removal rates. Same for Avira, though all the Avira extra bloat is stuff you have to add, so if you don't add it you don't get the bloat (apart from the massive bloat of modern AV). On Win 10 you can easily now rely on the AV since it is now basically a whitelist program and will object to anything it does not recognise. However you could use a decent whitelist program with a sensible GUI so you can stop beating your head against an ever changing UI that does not tell you much.
No, it is more than "basically a white list" program. White lists (or black lists) are way too resource intensive to maintain current enough to rely on. That's why signature/definition files are but a small part of Windows Defender. It antimalware engine also does "behavior" detection to look for suspicious behavior and activity, unauthorized activity to system settings, and it controls folder access to thwart ransomware, for a few examples. Oh, and it is now officially known as "Microsoft Defender" though it will take awhile for the name change to fully propagate.
The exceptional rate of false-positives of software and sites (matched only by 1 other AV) makes it as useful as using a whitelist. It is scared of its own shadow so blocks everything new, not because of clever heuristics or being good at recognising bad behaviour, it just says no to everything. That is not clever AV that is a whitelist, and one that is a pain to work with unlike a proper whitelist program. When it shows the same rate of detection and blocking as the top AV but without the high rate of guessing, then I will rate it as AV rather than a glorified whitelist. The real protections have come since MS integrated EMET as the win10 anti-exploit features, and they have nothing to do with virus recognition.
What are you talking about? Clearly not Windows Defender because it sure does not do that. In my line of work, I am constantly downloading, installing, and trying out new programs. My security (Windows Defender plus Malwarebytes) have not blocked anything. My browser might, but that's Pale Moon. In any case, this clearly biased anti-WD rhetoric is OT and not helping the OP.
Try writing new programs without certificates and see how it reacts. Ones you can download have more history thus time to be cleared. Each new version of WACUP gets blocked by defender until enough people have installed it. By the time it is happy with it a new build comes out and the dev gets the same complaints over and over again. The exceptionally high rate of false-positives with software and sites is because it just blocks stuff it doesn't know about.
@nine9s WD does have its own strict enforcement of file reputation so a new file indeed needs some number of downloads to be accepted, though its FP rate is not very high for the majority of home or average users. And a small developer like @andy Ful at Malwaretips has navigated the MS behemoth when a version of ConfigureDefender, which had a setting to disable WD, ran afoul of their rules. You may read about it here if interested. https://malwaretips.com/threads/configuredefender-utility-for-windows-10.79039/page-11
