[meta] Anti-Virus recommendation thread

posted 5 years ago by YesMovement 5 years ago by YesMovement +31 / -0

With Avast blocking the .wins for "phishing" I think it's time for me to change my anti-virus.

Been thinking about switching anyways, the program spies on what you're doing and then recommends products based on your activities which I find rather creepy.

So what's the best free AV these days?

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– Lurker404 4 points 5 years ago +4 / -0

I prefer prevention over a cure:

NoScript to only allow javascript that I absolutely need (also keeps ads and trackers at bay to some extent but some sites can be annoying to get working)
only use OS accounts with minimal privileges (so potential browser exploits don't gain admin rights or can access files they're not supposed to)
run sketchy programs that aren't downright viruses in a Sandbox or VM (e.g. Sandboxie)
virustotal.com for sketchy downloads (70 AVs are better than 1 but you have to learn to spot false positives)
turn off all useless OS features/services you don't use (Windows has a shitton of services on autorun that you don't need, plenty of everybody-panic exploits never could have affected me because the affected service was blocked)
backups in case something does happen (virus, harddrive crash, etc)

That said I also scan with Malwarebytes every now and then and keep Defender running on Windows.

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