KIS Total v Defender

Try3 said:

I would like to pose one question that you must answer to yourself before you take any further action - "Why have anything other than Windows Defender?"Denis

an excellent point Denis. The only thing that 'scares' me is that its Microsoft. They have been accused of selling info in the past to advertisers.

I appreciate that all software publishers now try to sell anonymised user data and my own primary concern about that is in its use of my limited internet data allowance. Other than that, once it's anonymised they can do whatever they like with it.

The data MS collect can be constrained to some extent using Settings, Privacy. I'd bet that using or not using WD would not make a blind bit of difference to what is collected - they provide the entire OS so one extra bit seems insignificant when it comes to data made available to them.

Similarly, if you were to chose an alternative then you would be subject to their attempts to collect your data.

Denis

elbmek said:

The only thing that 'scares' me is that its Microsoft. They have been accused of selling info in the past to advertisers.

If you are concerned about data, then your options are even more limited, since every AV sends data, though some send less, like Emsisoft. This review is a bit old, but still valid, if anything, it is even worse now.

Is Your Antivirus Tracking You? Youd Be Surprised At What It Sends

elbmek,

By the way, a couple of years ago I worked my way through several of the common AV applications so I could make up my own mind about them. Whilst sites such as avtest can be used to assess technical aspects of their behaviour, I was keen to discover how I got on with them in practice.

I tried these [paid versions, for at least a month each]

Bitdefender
Kaspersky
McAfee
Norton

and I discovered that

1 They were not as easy to use as WD - which is pretty much install & forget apart from its periodic nags about how long I delay sleep for on battery power
2 They caused unexpected limitations that were only diagnosed after thorough investigation [one, just by way of example, refused to allow me to connect to WU through the built-in WiFi adapter but was fine with a USB one I connected and was fine with the built-in one for all other sites - yet it produced no explanation that it was responsible for the blockage so I had to start off by investigating with nothing to go on.].
3 Their boasts about specific capabilities were all associated with awkwardness - either setting them up or using them routinely was awkward [or both]
4 Their AV malware definition updates could not readily be controlled - I inhibit WU and my WD updates are run by TS tasks twice a day but I only managed to set up an equivalent task for KIS.
5 Whilst most used only 1MB a day for updates, Bitdefender used a minimum** of 1GB a month in updates for each computer** you have because it replaces entire modules instead of just adding in new bits. I discussed this with their support group who said this was to improve its speed of response and to strengthen its resistance to hacking. This means BT is not suitable for anybody with a limited internet data allowance.
{** If updates are not constrained to once a day then the data usage can quickly rise to 3GB a month or more. There is no method of sharing updates across your local network, each computer needs to download them directly from BT's website.}
6 Not a single one of them did anything to persuade me that I would be better off with them rather than WD.

So the posts in which I have encouraged you to consider WD are not based on ignorance or blind prejudice.

All the best,
Denis

For standard users (no torrents, nefarious sites) WD should be fine... with it's telemetry, they are gaining from other AV users so should be rock-solid ( not so sure about zero-day infections as they may well just be after-the-fact) but still... they will rather block everything.. even your mother-in-law.. that's good.... right?

Anyway I'm happy with Kasper and Comodo as first line defence.

Thank you everyone for some excellent advice and opinions. I have gone down the Defender route. KTS still had 30 days to run but I thought that those 30 days can be used to run, and monitor Defender. As so many of you online trust Defender, I now see no reason why I should not. Thank you all again.

sportsfan148 said:

Every year Ive always checked Currys and Argos online...Ive never paid more than £20 for McAfee Internet Security. Try that first. At the moment though Im using Windows Defender and Im perfectly happy with it. I use weekly Malwarebytes Free scans too. Ive had no issues with this method

Talking about malwarebytes. I had to take my purchased copy off because it clashed with advanced system care and kept quarantining it. There was a dispute a couple of years ago because MWB accused Iobit of pinching their databases. It was supposedly settled between themselves but MWB still refuses to let it run. The last time it did this, over a year ago, Iobit told me to 'white list' them in MWB, I did and it made no difference. Until they settle their differences MWB has to go as ASC is a paid up version and still has 11 months to run. The pro version of ASC is damn good.

Defender is running well, I check it every couple of days and all is green. Maybe I dont even need MWB now??