What is the best anti-malware software?

What is the best anti-malware software?

Try using Malwarebytes.

I do use Malwarebytes.

If there was a best, we would all use it and agree on it. Malwarebytes is the closest you will get to an agreement here.

Best for what?
1. For price?
2. For most malware caught?
3. For fewest false positives?
4. For fastest scanning?
5. For smallest system load/overhead?
Prioritize that list any way you wish. The proper choice of AV software will depend on your list.

Item 5 was my reason for using Malwarebytes on my last desktop. I could not tolerate AV jump-ins messing with my program continuity. I play piano using the computer, and AV load can interrupt. AVG was too "heavy" at that time (five years ago), so I switched to MB.

But MB's scanning is intolerably SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. If not for it's small process footprint I would never have used it.

Now I have a new desktop, a high-end screamer. So I don't have load issues anymore. I gladly parted ways with MB. It was WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too slow.

I'm back on AVG. Not because AVG is so wonderful, but because MB is so SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.

Do not use MalwareBytes or other third-party security software. There GARBAGE. These programs have security vulnerabilities themselves as well. Windows Defender is adequate enough and its security controls can be even stronger by setting Group Policy settings (only available in the Pro and Enterprise).

The rule of thumb is to keep your PC up to date with security patches for the OS and all other add-ons as well like Adobe, Java, and Flash.

Keep your data backed up at all times and ensure that those are encrypted.

Do not post PII (Personal Identifiable Information) onto social media sites.

Use strong passwords for various websites.

Make sure you always use HTTPS with TLS encryption when purchasing or banking online

There is no such thing as best security software as the user is pretty much the key to security by taking vigilance.

Anti-Malware? Super Anti Spyware Free


SUPERAntiSpyware | Remove Malware | Remove Spyware - AntiMalware, AntiSpyware, AntiAdware!

does the trick for me everytime (it also picks up the hard ones)

win10freak said:

Do not use MalwareBytes or other third-party security software. There GARBAGE. These programs have security vulnerabilities themselves as well. Windows Defender is adequate enough and its security controls can be even stronger by setting Group Policy settings (only available in the Pro and Enterprise).

The rule of thumb is to keep your PC up to date with security patches for the OS and all other add-ons as well like Adobe, Java, and Flash.

Keep your data backed up at all times and ensure that those are encrypted.

Do not post PII (Personal Identifiable Information) onto social media sites.

Use strong passwords for various websites.

Make sure you always use HTTPS with TLS encryption when purchasing or banking online

There is no such thing as best security software as the user is pretty much the key to security by taking vigilance.

Great post! Explained and covered all the bases it very well. I couldn’t agree more, especially that “These programs have security vulnerabilities themselves as well”. The article below from the Windows Dev Center explains this and what MS has done about it. Better hope that other AVs get it correct. I know Defender does since MS creates the OS.

Protecting Anti-Malware Services

Windows 8.1 introduces a new concept of protected services to protect anti-malware services, which are a frequent target of attack by malware.

Introduction

Most anti-malware solutions include a user-mode service that performs specialized operations to detect and remove malware from the system. This user-mode service is also frequently responsible for downloading the latest virus definitions and signatures. This user-mode service becomes a frequent target of malware because it’s the single point of failure to disable protection on a system. To defend against attacks on the user-mode service, anti-malware vendors have to add a lot of functionality and heuristics to their software. However, such techniques are not completely foolproof and tend to be error prone because they have to identify functionality that Windows performs on their service and whitelist that functionality.

In Windows 8.1, a new concept of protected service has been introduced to allow anti-malware user-mode services to be launched as a protected service. After the service is launched as protected, Windows uses code integrity to only allow trusted code to load into the protected service. Windows also protects these processes from code injection and other attacks from admin processes.

This document describes how an anti-malware vendor with an Early Launch Anti-Malware (ELAM) driver can opt-in to this feature and launch their anti-malware service as a protected service.

Protecting Anti-Malware Services (Windows)

Also, no need to use 3rd party scanners. Windows has a sufficient scanner as well.

Safety Scanner - Windows Defender Security Intelligence

Good Info on this post even I agree, I still run 3rd party antivirus myself on most of the systems here, but learned a lot the above posts already.

System 2 Avast, System 3 Avast-Windows 7 Home 32bit

System 1 Avast currently, but was on defender briefly til I decided to make protection all the same as the other systems