Defender effectiveness

garydexter said:

Yes - look at all those lovely sponsored "non-biased" test results....

Defender is fine, along with Malwarebytes and that sponge in your skull...

Sry, but this right here is borderline idiotic.

Sure those particular "reviews" are sponsored, no contest there. But then you go on talking about Malwarebytes - the most aggressive (and genius) marketing campaign for the longest time now (years), that actually made a select few "independent" internet guru's rich already. Don't get me wrong, is good, and not because of it's joke malware analysis laboratory, but because it's reusing knowledge from the big guys, who actually invest a lot more in research than in marketing, and have hundreds of people working day and night to detect and neutralize threats.

No sponge in the skull can ever protect against software vulnerabilities that are found each day, every day.
Those are the real threats - stuff that can screw you without your knowledge, without you clicking a huge lame download button next to the tiny real one, without you (un)ticking a bundled offer checkbox.
And against those real threats, there is where Defender absolutely sucks ass, proven time and time again as being the baseline in effectiveness i.e. just a little better than no protection at all. Microsoft only cares about distributed attacks that your PC might be used in. Does not give two shits on your personal data or banking credentials.

You have been fine for so long, so Defender must be really good? WRONG!
It's just that you must be a very lucky and/or uninteresting dude. 3rd world country? Uninteresting. No corporate lan? Uninteresting. No vpn usage into work place? Uninteresting. No frequent internet banking? Uninteresting. Not famous/army/government/giant corp employed? Uninteresting. No supercomputer? Uninteresting. Not even having big tits? Really uninteresting.

And when you add to that the horrible performance hits (really unforgivable, at the end of 2015, you still have to add game folders to multiple Defender exclusion lists so you don't get weird stutters) is there any excuse to use it other than fear of change and/or blind trust and/or "if it works, why break it"?

But then, please keep it to yourself, and leave recommendations to more informed people.

BunnyJ said:

Funny thing is that I've just used Defender for years and not had a single virus. And I bet many others are just using Defender without getting viruses. The best AV is the one between your ears.

First, you should not quote posts you did not even bother to read.
Second, I am just gonna directly add to ignore list any one using the between your ears line from now on.
It's the ****ing end of 2015, when security patches drops like rain every day, on everything from internet browsers, flash player, pdf, tiff, office, silverlight and other plugins, windows services, windows authentication and every other major software that counts. Those security patches can't keep up with the armies of script kiddies using exploits to bring down even sizable infrastructures. Overall, software developers are getting dumber, and the hackers smarter. It's not about what you can do with your own hands, it's about what they can do without you even knowing. Look at Microsoft, forced to almost give-away Windows 10 just to fight it. And taking control away from automatic updates.

Anyone here give SecureAplus a try? I like their application whitelisting mechanism and they claim to scan your files using many online AV engines. The only ding I see is their optional offline AV engine is ClamAV, which I would take Windows Defender over. You can choose not to install the offline AV component and install the AV of your choice alongside it.

Some individuals over @ Neowin rave about it, so I may give it a go.

SecureAPlus - Download Free 10+ Anti-Virus & App Whitelisting in One

AveYo said:

Sry, but this right here is borderline idiotic.

Sure those particular "reviews" are sponsored, no contest there. But then you go on talking about Malwarebytes - the most aggressive (and genius) marketing campaign for the longest time now (years), that actually made a select few "independent" internet guru's rich already. Don't get me wrong, is good, and not because of it's joke malware analysis laboratory, but because it's reusing knowledge from the big guys, who actually invest a lot more in research than in marketing, and have hundreds of people working day and night to detect and neutralize threats.

No sponge in the skull can ever protect against software vulnerabilities that are found each day, every day.
Those are the real threats - stuff that can screw you without your knowledge, without you clicking a huge lame download button next to the tiny real one, without you (un)ticking a bundled offer checkbox.
And against those real threats, there is where Defender absolutely sucks ass, proven time and time again as being the baseline in effectiveness i.e. just a little better than no protection at all. Microsoft only cares about distributed attacks that your PC might be used in. Does not give two shits on your personal data or banking credentials.

You have been fine for so long, so Defender must be really good? WRONG!
It's just that you must be a very lucky and/or uninteresting dude. 3rd world country? Uninteresting. No corporate lan? Uninteresting. No vpn usage into work place? Uninteresting. No frequent internet banking? Uninteresting. Not famous/army/government/giant corp employed? Uninteresting. No supercomputer? Uninteresting. Not even having big tits? Really uninteresting.

And when you add to that the horrible performance hits (really unforgivable, at the end of 2015, you still have to add game folders to multiple Defender exclusion lists so you don't get weird stutters) is there any excuse to use it other than fear of change and/or blind trust and/or "if it works, why break it"?

But then, please keep it to yourself, and leave recommendations to more informed people.

I'm not really sure how to take your post - but now I see that your User is banned - it makes perfect sense now...

You said:

You don't need to pay for an antivirus. Many free antiviruses provide features that Defender doesn't.

I think you misread my post. I never said you need to pay for AV software.

I recommend Bitdefender Free edition. Light, stays out of the way.

Free Antivirus Software - Download Bitdefender Antivirus Free

Does Bitdefender support W10 now?