Norton, BullGuard, Avast, AVG, and Avira under the same ownership

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  1. Posts : 5,442
    Windows 11 Home
    Thread Starter
       #10

    Well there are many small AVs, virtually every country in the world has it's own, but as for the good ones, there are not that many around and half of them are just rebranded using Avira/Bitdefender engines.

    List of Consumer AV Vendors (PC) - AV-Comparatives
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 11,247
    Windows / Linux : Arch Linux
       #11

    Hi there
    Anybody on HOME computers not running Web servers, e-commerce or businesses from home -- I.e purely domestic machines doesn't need these days any 3rd party AV - in fact on W10 and W11 the current WD is probably the best there is as far as defence against malware etc. It's updated regularly -- sometimes daily and its based on the military grade (approved) security that Ms uses in its commercial cloud AZURE service. Against home computers you are infinitely more likely to get scammed than be a victim of malware.

    Technically of course a monopoly means only 1 source -- however companies can have a "near monopoly" position which makes it all but impossible for others to compete. Whats almost as bad are companies operating in a "Cartel" to protect their own market shares which has the same effect as the Cartel makes it impossible for others. In a lot of jurisdictions including the E.U this is illegal but often very difficult and extremely costly to prove.

    Forget those 3rd party AV products these days -- more hassle than they are worth and the solutions they were devised for are very much last century's problems when the OS's were not as robust and the whole "Hacker philosphy" was different. These days it's Cyber warefare, cyber crime and attacking infrastructure of countries such as energy supply, medical services, air traffic control etc etc. These people aren't interested in getting 30 USD from a pensioners computer.

    Cheers
    jimbo
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 4,201
    Windows 10 Pro x64 Latest RP
       #12

    I have used probably every every old fashioned AV in regular use over the years, ( on client systems) the same goes for the modern anti Malware products and most are just bloated with unwanted crap.

    I personally still use a Professional Antimalware solution, in my case Bitdefender Total Security, as, although I am semi-retired, I do still deal with some data that belongs to others, (clients), so it is their expectation that their data is "Safe"

    Of course for general home users, the built in windows options are adequate for day to day protection
      My Computers


  4. Posts : 15,441
    Windows10
       #13

    Frankly, I do not think it really matters which AV package you use these days. The AV part only really accounts for a small part of the overall security. By far the larger part of security issues these days comes down to user practice. One of my relatives always got infected by being click happy. I locked his pc down with an S version, no admin rights, bios password etc (and of course regular backups), and he has not had any significant issues since.

    One problem with users who are not that security aware is they get lulled into a false sense of security "because I have paid, it must be better".

    The other thing with a lot of packages is that they can be customised a lot but truth is most people (myself included) struggle to understand what a lot of the customisation option really mean and either just use defaults, or perhaps worse, customise with no real idea of they are improving or worsening security.

    In the end, the oxymoronically named "Common Sense" is still probably the single most important influence in minimising security risks.

    Good security is about layers of protection.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 5,048
    Windows 10/11 Pro x64, Various Linux Builds, Networking, Storage, Cybersecurity Specialty.
       #14

    cereberus said:
    Good security is about layers of protection.
    Per my comment above, this is what I have been preaching for years.

      My Computer


  6. Posts : 289
    Windows 10 Pro 21H2
       #15

    It also comes down to privacy issues when running an AV, since it can look at anything on your computer.
      My Computers


 

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