Sup Dollars,

What's everyone's preferred free antivirus? I need some help decided between AVG, Avast, or Avira...Or something else?

Help would be appreciated :D

I use avast, but being smart on what you click on will always be way more effective than any anti virus would be.

I use AVG and Malwarebytes. They work well together. However, I rarely get any detections aside from tracking cookies, because as >>2 said I am careful when using the Internet.

Oops, forgot Malwarebytes. Definitely get that, It will pick up "valid" programs that you don't want that were bundled with others. I accidentally installed webcake once with some freeware, took me forever to remove it all manually. When testing Malwarebytes I intentionally installed webcake and Malwarebytes cleaned it up perfectly.

use avast good one....bit defender some time suck..

The best free AV is Bitdefender: http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html

It is one of the best tested AV out there: http://www.av-test.org/no_cache/en/tests/test-reports/?tx_avtestreports_pi1%5Breport_no%5D=134980

Plus it does not take up many resources, stays out of your way, and works very silently.

A word of wisdom: do not use Malwarebytes as an AV or run it along side an AV, it should be used for periodic scans only.

>>6 If you mean don't have them both scan at the same time, I don't think Malwarebytes interferes with AV's, or at least it doesn't with AVG. They've of course said this many times. As long as you don't have Malwarebytes or your AV scan memory objects when they are scanning at the same time, I don't think it's an issue.

>>6 Malwarebytes and avast have never interfered with eachother for me, even when both are scanning.

I like AVG I use it for both. Hint on AVG though, If you get the free version, It will say that your free trial will end, but it doesn't it just restarts. It gives you almost everything you need on the free version. The scan gets almost everthing. There is a fault in every anit-virus. I would actually suggest getting more than one anti-virus & Anti-Malware.

I use and am more than happy with Webroot anti-virus, and another note, the more popular a anti- virus is, the more likely someone will make a virus to get around it, so you need to find a good balance between popular (since popular ones are obviously good) and underground ones, so people dont make viruses to get around it

i think that you could easily use somthing that just doesn't let the viruses onto the comuter like the TOR browser or somthing like that

Bitdefender the 1st in ranking antivirus , they offer total security 60 days if you like in facebook

MSE or Microsoft Security Essentials has been my go to anti-virus. If you're skeptical due to it's name, I urge you to google it and read reviews. Tech enthusiasts enthuse about this free antivirus.

1. It's free
2. It consumes low RAM when active.
3. Frequent and almost weekly updates
4. Real time protection.

AVG works great for me , but for full security and protection extra payments need to be paid for the pro version

>having an anti-virus
lol

>>15 Are you a Linux user?

No one can compromise us!
-linux users
Have fun not playing games!
-windows users

>>15 Everyone who downloads stuff on the internet is going to contract a virus eventually, anti-virus just reduces the chances of it.

Comodo works pretty well, and I've used AVG back when it was good too. Not so much anymore.

Malwarebytes and Spybot Search&Destroy are great for purging your system when it's infected, and everyone should have CCleaner for monthly cleaning house.

Waterfox is also a great browser that doesn't incorporate some of the newer garbage Firefox main does, and your add ons should be: Adblock Plus, Blender, DoNotTrackMe, FoxyProxy, RefControl and TrackMeNot. Also use SelfDestructingCookies if you're REALLY paranoid about viruses or keyloggers. Sorry for the Tl;Dr.

>>16 No.
I just know how to clean up my computer when I download from shady pron sites. ;D

>>19 How would you clean up your computer without using an anti-virus? That's sort of what an AV does.
I rarely get viruses (usually tracking cookies) but there's no way I could manually find one if I ever got one.

>>20 I don't know how to do anything.
But I have the internet, and it really hasn't ever let me down in these types of situations.
I guess, I've never seen the point of an anti-virus when I could put in the extra work, learn something, and solve the problem just as well.

>>21 How could you possibly find a virus?
The only time you see a problem is when it's too late.
It's not a program.
It's not installed on your system.
It could be in an archive.
It could even be a file without an extension.
You can sometimes get spyware (like Conduit), but manually finding and deleting viruses is almost impossible.
I would say its just worth it to get a free anti-virus. AVG free is a good one.

In regards to the above. I got some malware once a while ago when I was a young internet goer. My antivirus of course did nothing about it (I had NOD32 at the time I think), and I ran Malwarebytes like half a dozen times and it didn't properly get rid of it either.

I ended up googling its name I think and tinkered with registries or something like that (it was years ago), deleted files by hand and after a really frustrating day got rid of it.

So antiviruses aren't really the end-all of anything in my own, admittedly very limited, experience :T

>>23 Definitely true. They are not the complete solution for every problem.

However, they are the complete solution for most problems.
They are, at least, the first step.