Best Free AntiVirus program of 2019

[vistalize]

What are yall's opinions?

[Erowid]

Windows defender.

Don't click on malicious links.

[perrinoia]

Anti viruses suck. They don't just detect malicious software. They detect software that shares bits of code with malicious software. They isolate or delete bits of those programs.

I've had anti virus software delete bits of windows and tribes before, and that's unacceptable.

Instead, I just back up frequently and if my computer starts acting funny, I either research the problem and fix it or reformat and then grab backups of my files from the cloud or where ever I stored it.

[vistalize]

aite gotcha

[KILROY]

I've never had a problem with Windows Defender or Malwarebytes, both have actually caught a few things. I also use Adware Cleaner and CC Cleaner, now these two you do need to be careful with, especially CC Cleaner. CC Cleaner will miss interpret a program and prompt you to delete it, and the program is legit, happened to me a few times till I started taking the time to look at what it was prompting me to delete.

Making a backup as Perrinoia stated is always a good thing. I don't like using clouds, you can lose info. if it goes down, or I've seen them get hacked and stuff get changed by the hackers. Before RAM sticks, I used a CD-RW and just copied onto it over and over, but when RAM sticks came out, I started making my back-ups to them. I even have an external multi-terabyte hard drive that I have on my Homegroup Network that I use to store things.

So, with your new computer, I'd make a back-up before loading a bunch of stuff onto it. When I go to add something to my computer, I make a new back-up, naming it as #2, etc. What this does...if your not sure about what's on the first back-up, you have a new one that you can use. Load your new program(s) and see how everything works out, if it doesn't, you have one or more back-ups to choose from.

The reason your anti-virus programs delete sub-coding is due to it being infected by the bad coding that was loaded onto your computer. I say still use them, but always make a back-up to reload in case the anti-virus program goes too far with trying to clean your system, and try to be careful on the sites you click on to visit, including the spam you get via email.

[AnniDv6]

Windows defender.

Don't click on malicious links.

This is the best advice by far when it comes to this type of thing.

They really all kind of suck because they can be a pain to use and if you really got something bad they don't always clean up all that great anyways. Just beware I have had Malwarebytes brick a computer of mine on two different occasions when they pushed an update that did something it wasn't supposed to. If you don't have auto-update on and you pay attention to their forums it's safer. They also deleted a bunch of affected peoples posts back then when it happened and generally acted pretty shady so just beware.

Having security features always auto update is sometimes just as bad as not ever updating it and being vulnerable to day zero exploits that people will find. Damned if you damned if you don't kind of thing so again don't click bad things and don't download a bunch of weird programs.

[KILROY]

The bad thing, how do you know if the link your clicking on is legit or not? You don't find out till it's too late. Your using the "Information Highway", and have to click on links to be able to use it. Same as spam you get via an email. The only advice for email spam, is if you don't know who it's from, don't click on it. You can hover your mouse over the main name of the sender and it will give you a pop-up of the senders address. This is the best way to see who sent you the email, without clicking into it. If you don't recognize the senders address, delete it, without clicking into it.

[perrinoia]

It's actually quite simple to know whether a download is bad or not.

It's all about context - Where is the link?

• Porn site? Don't download it.
• Gaming website? Read reviews first.
• Computer component Manufacturers website? Probably safe to download
• Email, private message, instant message, etc? How well do you know the sender?
• Is the url hot linked or hosted in house? If someone shares a file on this website, and the url contains "thelandofoz.net/", it's probably trustworthy. If someone shares a file and the link says, "mediashare.com/" and thre are like 15 ads that look like download buttons on that website, don't bother.

But that's not foolproof, so we have to have another couple of layers of protection. I will allow antivirus software to scan files as i download them, but once they're installed, that's how i want my computer to run from now on. So you want an antivirus that can auto scan downloads, and never schedule it to scan your harddrive. Or strictly instruct it to scan specific folders, like your downloads folder. But that whole layer is optional, in my opinion.

Last layer of defense is your backups. Personally, i have 1 drive for windows ands another drive for documents, videos, photos, downloads, etc.... even on my microsoft surface, i have a 256GB MicroSD card that contains a backup of all my important stuff, so if i have to reformat the ssd, i still have the MicroSD card.

You have a windows installation thumb drive now. Maybe add the wifi drivers to that thumb drive. That's all you need to get started on a reformat. Once reformatted, you can download the latest drivers from the manufacturers websites, download steam, let steam reinstal your games, etc...

[KILROY]

Good points Perr!

[AnniDv6]

Check this out as well. Windows Sandbox. Sandbox is a new thing for Windows that lets you open .exe files in what is essentially a virtual machine meaning it is contained and can't really harm your actual system. The last I read about it was that it's coming soon. Should be in one of the next couple of patches I believe.

People have been using third party programs to do this for awhile now, but it's a new thing for Windows itself to have it.

Here's a link
https://www.howtogeek.com/399290/how-to ... test-apps/