Is paying for antivirus a waste of money?

Night Hawk said:

I'm well familiar with the free version of AVG having run with that for years. But the time did come several years ago when I was finding more was going to be needed which was proven correct. You see it wasn't GFI's av or AVG's or Norton's or any other company's av program but moving up from simply av to a fully loaded software that makes more sense.

As I was saying before an ouch of prevention is worth a pound of cure! If you are going to go out and pay for a software from a particular company you want to go with their top of the line as for as home users that is in order to those additional features rolled into the program. Not every av software company offers that.

That's all your opinion not necessarily what it is today in W 10 some years ago it was maybe all different along with poor (or no ) browser security & sandboxing in fact they don't officially recommend anything beyond Win Defender now but will say it's probably OK w/ defender [off ]

All this expensive bloated $$ AV bloatware will be probably be irrelevant soon anyway as browser ,HDWE and OS security advances that's the word in the tech sector investment crowd .

In the last 14 yrs or so other than Mbam anti exploit I found AVG and Avast free and Windows 10 defender and MS antimalware have been working for me . I have 4 heavily used Win 10 PC 's here and no problems in the cheap seats right now .

I don't use the MS browsers much I think Chrome x64 is more secure and I prefer that or Firefox anyway the only time any nasty toolbar hijackers or some nasty Conflict search engine / toolbar hijacker variants hosting very nasty persistent malware got in was by MS IE 11 & AVG free and none of the paid or free AV suites the AVG web shield or mbam even heard of it at the time .

I had to use several one time use extra strength malware cleaners and a lot of reg and other editing to save and recover some valuable data on a PC that wasn't backed up , (not mine) and I don't know that a web shield would catch it back then it was 6 mo. before it even became known outside of a few folks then all H. was being warned about it .

Outside of Win 10 defender I like AVG free for a resident AV scanner and mbam free for a resident malware scanner even though other AV scanners & paid suites score higher & lower then AVG or Avast free in independent testing .

IMO & experience large AV software suites are often a lot of unnecessary bloatware (more about $$ than anything else ) and slow down things and can cause other instabilities and incompatibilities or worse ....there are prominent groups of folks that matter that will tell you and I the same thing .

Your opinion on AV suites may be outdated although I think real time web malware protection is good myself viruses are probably old news by now but they may be out there anyway nothing is foolproof and people are foolish .

The long and short of it is we have differing opinions and no proof of anything other than anecdotal experience for Windows 10 and all the newest web browsers and x86 runtime apps that won't stand up as reliably valid statistically . ☻

davidhk said:

.............The long and short of it is we have differing opinions and no proof of anything other than anecdotal experience for Windows 10 and all the newest web browsers and x86 runtime apps that won't stand up as reliably statistically valid .................

Agreed.

Each to his own.
If one setup works for me, that's what I am using regardless of what others say.

Now that is talking more common sense! You have to go by the type of browsing you do in order to more accurately assess the actual needs! General local security any good av program and firewall will generally take care of things. It's for those other times however is when you want the extras put to use!

When just lately having run some extended searches on something while everything was off except WD that's when Not IE but Firefox 44.0.2 got nailed even with the Noscripts addon running! The bot went on just like any other normal update. Surprise for the Not IE browsers! None are ever 100% totally safe! None period if they are connected to the web! Despite the increased security seen with the browsers them selves that shows things still can get through!

Gee all this time I thought it was Porshe and Saab, Toyota going at it with Mazda!

Night Hawk said:

Now that is talking more common sense! You have to go by the type of browsing you do in order to more accurately assess the actual needs! General local security any good av program and firewall will generally take care of things. It's for those other times however is when you want the extras put to use!

When just lately having run some extended searches on something while everything was off except WD that's when Not IE but Firefox 44.0.2 got nailed even with the Noscripts addon running! The bot went on just like any other normal update. Surprise for the Not IE browsers! None are ever 100% totally safe! None period if they are connected to the web! Despite the increased security seen with the browsers them selves that shows things still can get through!

Gee all this time I thought it was Porshe and Saab, Toyota going at it with Mazda!

Never had anthing significant get by Google Chrome & whatever I use in over a decade on my own PC's YMMV . Whatever I've been using AV/malware wise is playing nice with 14291 and the builds before that on this PC and my other PC's on 10586th2 .

Now 124291 is playing nice with Chrome x64 so it's back on the default throne and Firefox a preferred alternative browser as usual .


Edge and IE11 get to play web videos now and then sometimes they can beat Chrome & F.F. loading and play embedded web videos more smoothly and load videos the other browsers won't load at all and thay and can do Neflix1080p in windows 10 x64. and IE 11 on 8.1 x64 too . Chrome can only get to 720P on Netflix if I want to see that on the PC instead of the 4K TV in the room here next to it .


Statistically ( depending on the statistics you read ) read IE11 / Windows 10 browser may be slightly ahead of Chrome x64 security with Firefox third and maybe Opera ahead of all of them all on Windows 10 or when you read something else Chrome may be ahead of IE 11 and on top . I haven't mentioned Edge but maybe it fits in there probably near or maybe better than IE 11 ☻

Likewise with AV /Malware products (depending on the statistics you read ) one may be ahead of another.

What has been proven beyond a doubt however is nothing is foolproof and people are foolish

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
Probably time to end this thread - If you like AV software nothing here will make you stop using it, If you don't like it or feel there's no need for it then there's also nothing on this thread to make you start using it.

Bit like the old argument - is paying for Sex worthwhile -- also a 100% individual choice too. No definitive answer to these questions can really be given.

Use if you want to - don't use if you don't -- but whatever you do surf safely and beware of SCAMS.

Cheers
jimbo

Most scams prey on user vulnerability! They get you when you ever click on something or get conned into buying something that doesn't even exist! Other scams are fake sites dressed up even with "https//" protocols to look legit until you buy and... "saw ya comin'!"

As far as anything posted here no one does have proofs? unless they have insider access to actual antimalware lab test reports for each program. And even that will be outdated by the time it gets out! Regardless of what you use or don't use some new bug waits just around the corner for you!

One thing is for certain if you end up out there is some "Strange Place" on the web you need to tread lightly?!



And that's going to be when you wish you had every protection possible installed!