Is Windows Defender with system-wide smart screen enough?

And now as an experienced user, you still believe that you have to click on everything or watch/visit XXX's?

Just a visit to a legit [and already infected] webpage is enough......

i.e.
Vast majority of malware attacks spawned from legit sites
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/vast-majority-of-malware-attacks-spawned-from-legit-sites/
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...fections-Are-Usually-From-Legitimate-Websites

 

Maybe he just forgot to mention about keeping up-to-date.
If you always keep up-to-date, getting infection via exploit is very hard because there's no many 0day exploit attacking home user.
Recent 0day in IE and flash are originally only performed in targeted attack, then some criminal copied the attack to infect home user but the number of victim were still very limited and actually it could be avoided if you paid attention to news since workaround was published before patch release.
At the risk of misunderstanding, even if you have vulnerable plugins and went to exploit site, still you can't be always infected since most exploit kit only target relatively narrow range of application versions.

 

My personale experience is that in 10 years I've never suffered a malware attack from a legit webpage. Never. Maybe I was just lucky, or perhaps it was adblock plus that did the job, but that's the truth. I also think there is the tendency to exaggerate by the av-software companies in order to frighten people and push them to buy a paid antivirus solution. I tell you this: I have a very old system in my office with windows xp and no antivirus at all (it is simply too old to run any) and guess what? No infection in 3 years since it is without av.

 

Right. The most important thing is keeping the system always up-to-date.

 

And I have 19 years and no infection at all. So what?

There are a lot more experienced/educated people in AV industry.
I'm reading what they are saying and I follow the instructions/recommendations.
If you wish to follow your own way, be my guest.

And somewhere, somebody else won the lottery........

 

I don't see why you are so acid. I didn't question what you said. I've just pointed out my personal experience. I've never had any infections, and you neither. So what? Did I tell you are wrong? It doesn't seem to me.
So try to be a little more polite when you speak to someone who just thinks differently from you.

 

"personal experience"........
=

From my side: End of story.

 

Okay, if you are not able to discuss in a polite and constructive way, but only to quote whatever I say, it's not my problem. Go ahead with your attitude.

 

What anon is trying to say, is even if you had not had any infections, having that extra security is needed these days and doesn't hurt. If MSE was the only free product out there I'd understand, some people don't wanna pay but since there are many good decent AVs, why settle for a low end one?

What bothers me most about Defender is the way it receives signature updates via Windows Updates rather than automatically like an AV would.

 

stapp, you need to turn on those "modifications".
Is this a normal way? Is this for the average user?

As Mortal Raptor already said, why not via the easy way as every AV does?

 

I have similar experience. I've been using and testing different Avs, but they never stopped anything dangerous.
Education and safe computing is IMO MUCH more important than AV.

 

That definition don't affect real-time protection as long as internet connection is available.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2014/09/22/microsoft-cloud-protection.aspx
That only affects on-demand scan, or when internet is not available.

100% agree.

 

?

We are talking re the Windows Defender updates.

 

I know you're talking about def update of WD or MSE, so I just suggested it's not vital thing to protection.

 

That's interesting. Didn't know it implements some cloud technology. Thanks for sharing.

 

I see, ok then.

 

That's another story.

 

I agree there is certainly an enormous amount of fear, uncertainty, and doubt when statistics provide figures of 55,000 new malware variants daily, source- Dell SonicWall, 82,000 daily according to Panda Security, 100,000 according to McAfee, 160,000 daily still from Panda Security (another article same month in 2014), 315,000 according to Kaspersky (they even call it "NUMBER OF THE YEAR" as if it was a Guinness book record!), 450,000 according to AV Test Institute ...And so on and so forth, the list goes on... Lies, damned lies, and statistics...

Obviously there is a clear vested interest from AV companies to maximize rather than minimize fear, as we are talking about a huge amount of money, several billions of users globally, so much so that it can be shared without too much of internal feuds in the category. Then why does my AV detect so little every 2-3 years? Even browsing the darkest areas of the web, I even ventured once out of curiosity in the Deep Web which is supposed to be actively monitored by government agencies for serious criminality, and absolutely nothing happened, I scanned my computer with 5 different scanners at the time and found nothing.

I still pay for an AV because there is no denying that something/someone could theoretically hack/block my computer until a restore is accomplished, also against information theft it's good to have several layers, but I really think there is a lot of hyperbole going around...

 

Wise words that antivirus vendors wouldn't want people to read...

 

And it is known now that John McAfee exaggerated threats in that time, and we may laugh at current situation 5 years later.
However once IoT become more common, we can't laugh any more as finally IT security becom directly related to human life.

 

I won't be discrediting the findings of AV vendors, they could be true. It's just that the methods being used to attack home computer systems are too boring. They all are involving social-engineering. If there was any other methods that sound more interesting, these aren't really used in real-life scenarios.

 

Has there been any improvement made since THIS thread?

 

yeah when I tested windows 10 I was like wow at the system wide smart screen, I think I wont be on windows 7 for much longer, but with that said I don't like windows defender.

Also I agree with the question how are people getting infected?

In my view hardening browser's and common sense as well as updating software does wonders. The only time I see a unplanned popup from my AV is usually with email attachments.

is WD webroot? Because currently I don't rate that software much, slow, buggy and it failed basic testing I did to see if it blocks malware.