Anti virus programs

[corvairbob]

what is the view on anti virus programs? i just started using a pc again after having a chrome book for years. they stopped updating them so i went back to a pc.now i have win 10 professional and i see they use defender, but some are telling me i need to get a different security program that defender is no good or it has loopholes and to get another program to run with it.

so i have defender going and avast and spybot but way back when i used pc's i was told multiple virus programs reacted with each other and not to run them together. i believe it was kim komando. anyway now that i'm back on pc's and things look to me like they have really changed i need to find out now how things are.

so i recearched some programs for security and looked at reviews and find avg gets bad reviews and my guess is most will but before i spend a ton on money on anything i figured i would ask here for help to pick one out. also do any of them offer me to buy one license and run the program on more than one pc. i have 5 in the house we use. 2 at the table 2 in the living room and 1 when we go out for overnight weekends.

thanks for any help.bp.

 

[clifford_cooley]

https://www.av-comparatives.org/

If you are looking for an extensive report, you can look here. - https://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/avc_sum_201712_en.pdf

For a quick rundown, you can look at this chart. - https://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/avc_factsheet2018_03.pdf

For a personal opinion, Defender does every thing I need.


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[BigFeet]

If you are running Avast, Widows Defender will be disabled. Personally I use Avast and Malwarebytes Free as a supplemental anti malware program. I used Bitdefender for years, and it was an excellent, lightweight anti virus program. But I recently started having issues with very slow loading web pages. Disabling Bitdefender fixed it, so I switched to Avast.

For most who practice safe surfing, Windows Defender is ample. I just get a bit adventurous sometimes, and Defenders detection rates are quite what some of the others are.

 

[corvairbob]

thanks for all this info. i use avast now the free version. and it looks like defender is running as the shield is showing with a checkmark in it. so if it was disabled wouldn't the shield go away?

will bitdefender run with avast and or defender? or will i need to turn them off and just run one? i also have spybot defender running so maybe i'm going a bit overboard. that is why i'm asking.

for the last few years i depended on google for my online security and it worked great, but sence they stopped protecting my chromebooks i just gave up on them and now rely on myself again for security. i do banking online now as that is the trend. i don't open by choice any emails the have the alphabit in the emails if i do not recognize the email in the top line i assume it is a scam. but someday one of those may get by me and that is all it takes. or the hackers will figure out how to use a known email to me and i will open it and bam i got hit. kind of like amazon now hackers got the phone number changed to go directly to them. someday i may fall for one of those. so i need good security.

plus it is hard to determine it the security is not some hacker starting up a security system to hook people into them and take your stuff.

 

[BigFeet]

The shield is there because it also links to the windows security section in settings. If you go to settings/update & security/windows security/virus & threat protection, it will tell you what anti virus is active. If you want the icon to go away, right click on the start menu, select task manager, select the startup tab, right click on windows defender notification, and click disable. When you restart your PC it will be gone.

 

[corvairbob]

thanks big feet. i click it and it opens up and tell me last time it ran a scan, it this case it was this morning it rean one so even with avg running and spybot defender must be doing something or i would not run. it may not be much but it has not be deactivated yet. thanks. i may go with the bitdefender if the consensus is that is better that avg and defender. bp.