Replace Microsoft Security Essentials with A Proper Antivirus?

in my experience fixing computers, which I do for a living, most infected computers are self-inflicted. Users will install free software with riders they do not opt out of: would you also like to install Sweet IM? Inbox.com toolbar? Coupon.com? All which generates more malware. It's consensual, so malware tools would sometimes ignore it unless you do a manual scan with, say, Malwarebytes after killing all processes with Rkill.

I'm constantly reminding users to quit spamming the Next button when installing program and be more careful.
 
Krenum said:
I wouldn't put any of that "AntiVirus" Crap software on your machine, it does more harm than good and is the biggest waste of money I can think of when it comes to computers.

Its not the 1990's anymore. You do not need it. If you get a Virus, save yourself some time and just format your hard drive.
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lol terrible advice.

That's like my friend who was too much of a noob to troubleshoot his computer and would be formatting it every weekend.

A better idea is a do an acornis backup of your system on a regular. If you happen to get a virus that you cannot get ride of you wipe and reload from an image and your back up in 30mins without having to reinstall everything.
 
MSE works fine for me. I also run Malwarebytes weekly (of course, if it finds something big, the damage is already done, it's not proactive). I also browse and download smart.

It's not the best. It used to be very good, now it's just mediocre.

AVG used to be awesome, then it went downhill a bit, too. Then Avast was great (still is, other than the nags). I'll go free before I pay, unless there is some need for a paid version.
 
Switched from NOD32 to Panda Cloud Free and it's just as good if not better. Very small RAM foot print, catches everything (knock on wood) and rarely gives me false positive issues. My friend who is still on NOD32 was getting "cannot get token" issues on Titanfall and we finally figured out it was his NOD32 doing something crazy.

Did I mention the price is right?
 
evilsofa said:
No AV can protect against a maliciously stupid user; there are anecdotal examples earlier in thread. That being said, you are not a sufficient protection against malware. Nothing you do will prevent against malware that installs itself from an ad on a trusted site; if you think that never happens, think again - it's happened several times on the very website you are reading now.
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What if you disable and live completely without JavaScript, Java, Flash, Silverlight, and other extensions? And use NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere, Force TLS, Adblock Plus, and Flashblock heavily?

If you reduce internet browsing to mere static HTML web-pages (like those from the 90s) then you're safe.

On top of this, you could also throw in blocking of GIF images, forced DNS traffic through OpenDNS + a fully configured OpenDNS account, and pixelserv adblocking from router.

Some people really don't care about YouTube and stupid things like that; some of us keep our lives simple. :D
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
lol terrible advice.

That's like my friend who was too much of a noob to troubleshoot his computer and would be formatting it every weekend.

A better idea is a do an acornis backup of your system on a regular. If you happen to get a virus that you cannot get ride of you wipe and reload from an image and your back up in 30mins without having to reinstall everything.
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bro, just http://www.downloadmoreram.com, will solve ur problems
 
BOTA:49 said:
For home users, it's not bad. However, messing with the Remote Administration Console and using File Security on the servers lead to a huge mess of instability an insane number of false positives. ESET gives me a massive headache at work.
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The only people who write/back these articles are the people who want you to pay for using AV software. I've never had a single false positive with MSE--not one--whereas in only a couple of excursions with Malwarebytes I saw literally dozens of false positives "identified" as "possibilities"--that turned out on examination to be nothing more than partial text program strings left in the registry by uninstalled programs--about as harmful as oxygen...;) MWB wanted me think it was doing a bang-up job in "finding" all of this stuff MSE had already identified as harmless. It was just wasting my time and alarming me for nothing. (If I want to registry clean I won't use an AV program...;))

True story: my wife's friend brought me a laptop that was nigh unusable--couldn't manage to open a browser. She had installed no less than *five* AV programs at the same time--three I had heard of, AVG and Norton's and MalwareBytes, but the other two I had never heard of and I suspected they were letting viruses in as opposed to getting rid of them...;) Anyway, I managed to uninstall all of them and then to open a browser and get MSE on there--my gosh--the woman's laptop must've had at least 400 viruses and Trojans on her system! Never seen as many in one place in my life! It took three full-scan runs of MSE to finally fully clean that system, but clean it , it did. Now she's using MSE and nothing else and doing fine.

What many people don't understand is that two AV programs are *not* better than one--and *five* AV programs is considerably worse than one! The programs then get in each others' way and as in the case of my wife's friend--literally paralyze each other so that none of them work at all!

MSE has served me well over the last decade across a number of platforms. Every once in a while I'll pick up something from a web-site somewhere and MSE *instantly* catches it the second it hits the system and instantly removes it--and tells me when that happens, which is how I know. I'm certain that if MSE was no good I'd have discovered that years ago...;)

I think the current AV testing methods are crummy. They'll put 700 viruses, or what they think are 700 viruses on a single drive, and then have these programs do a scan and record numbers picked up on the first scan (presumably) and write those down and then start turning them into statistics. Problem is, AV programs aren't designed to work like that--they're designed to catch and neutralize viruses as they occur in host environment exposure--that is, one or a few at a time. Not hundreds at a time, and certainly not in a single scan. AV malware checkers are not designed to be "run once" and then turned off--they are designed to scan as many times a week as the user wishes, from a high of daily to a low of once a week. One scan simply won't do under any circumstances unless you also stop browsing the Internet.

In ten years MSE hasn't given me a reason to use anything else. I get virus profile updates direct from Microsoft at least once a day--sometimes twice a day. Its footprint is very light and it is the most non-invasive av program I've ever used as well as the most effective. Highly recommended.

P.S. Want to hear something amusing? A co-worker just bought a Dell desktop that shipped with Windows 8. Dell had turned off MSE (integrated into Win8 & up as "defender") and instead installed a trial version of that gosh-awful McAffee's! He corrected that problem immediately by uninstalling McAfees and turning MSE back on. Amazing. But IBM was paying Dell to place McAfees trial versions! It's all about the money.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
lol terrible advice.

That's like my friend who was too much of a noob to troubleshoot his computer and would be formatting it every weekend.

A better idea is a do an acornis backup of your system on a regular. If you happen to get a virus that you cannot get ride of you wipe and reload from an image and your back up in 30mins without having to reinstall everything.
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It's actually excellent advice. There's absolutely no garantee as in ZERO that your computer is really clean after you get flagged by an antivirus. First of all they don't catch even near 100% of infections and in many cases they simply get pwned and chug happily along while infected.
 
WaltC said:
The only people who write/back these articles are the people who want you to pay for using AV software. I've never had a single false positive with MSE--not one
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This is simply because MSE catches very few real positives. It was never intended to be a 'real' protection as it relies on users using IE and outlook at their default security settings (eg cripplemode).
 
But that's a logical fallacy. Just because you aren't 100% sure you're clean, nor are you guaranteed to be clean after an AV software finds something, that doesn't mean it's a waste. Shoot, combined with good browsing habits, if an AV software caught 80% of the infections I might get from ads etc on legit sites, I'd say it's well worth it, and they are going to catch more than that.
 
http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/latest_comparative/index

2129wjo.jpg
 
I'm not a warez or porn monkey (or a IE/FF user) and I don't blindly run or open every binary or data files which could be infected, so my anti-malware needs are easily met by MSE*.

* also, my particular configuration is not an easy target for mass shot-gun style attacks, so it isn't a primary target for attackers. Virtually any individual system can be attacked with enough effort, but I'm not really in anyone's crosshairs and I wouldn't be stupid enough to fall for social engineering. :p

If I were someone who "just gets infected... dunno y" all the time I would probably just stay away from computers. :p
 
There you go.
Even if something gets through my AV software's preventative measures (say an average of 80% of malware gets caught), there's ~ a 90% chance that the AV software will pick it up and take care of it once it's infected the computer. That means that I am only vulnerable to 2% of malware if I have an average AV software installed.

Take that 2% and decrease it by the effects of good browsing, and suddenly, you're pretty good to go.

Considering how many of those options are free and better than MSE, MSE no longer makes any sense as a go-to.
 
Sorry, bad math: 4% of malware will get through the average AV software, not 2%.
 
Modred189 said:
But that's a logical fallacy. Just because you aren't 100% sure you're clean, nor are you guaranteed to be clean after an AV software finds something, that doesn't mean it's a waste. Shoot, combined with good browsing habits, if an AV software caught 80% of the infections I might get from ads etc on legit sites, I'd say it's well worth it, and they are going to catch more than that.
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No, best way is to browse using a safe OS and browser. Windows should be used only where alternatives won't work properly and that's a constantly decreasing field.
 
pxc said:
I'm not a warez or porn monkey (or a IE/FF user) and I don't blindly run or open every binary or data files which could be infected, so my anti-malware needs are easily met by MSE*.

* also, my particular configuration is not an easy target for mass shot-gun style attacks, so it isn't a primary target for attackers. Virtually any individual system can be attacked with enough effort, but I'm not really in anyone's crosshairs and I wouldn't be stupid enough to fall for social engineering. :p

If I were someone who "just gets infected... dunno y" all the time I would probably just stay away from computers. :p
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It's enough if you have flash installed and don't block it. You're wide open.
 
B00nie said:
No, best way is to browse using a safe OS and browser. Windows should be used only where alternatives won't work properly and that's a constantly decreasing field.
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Yes, because I want to switch OSs JUST TO BROWSE THE INTERNET. :rolleyes:
 
daglesj said:
Yeah I don't know why tech people keep saying that crap about getting viruses from Porn sites. It's like they have never used the web.

The virus writers do this to make money. The best way to get the most money and credit card details is to target the over 55's who have the most money but the least PC experience. Not basement dwelling porn hoarders.
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Where i work most of the viruses/malware always came from porn. Maybe not a porn site itself but the popup ads that show up in other windows that blink and flash will say to press ok to download something and most people would. I'm not saying that direct website is going to do it but there are other factors when loading up those websites also. I don't know anyone that gets viruses by email anymore. A lot of people get viruses where you gotta enter in a credit card number. Usually you find out they surfing a lot of porn when it happened. Some people admit to me thats how it happened. Watch out for the popups mostly.
 
Modred189 said:
Yes, because I want to switch OSs JUST TO BROWSE THE INTERNET. :rolleyes:
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Not that weird. There are virtual machine appliances for this purpose.

They run in seamless mode, so it looks like a local browser running on your host OS... except it's a stripped-down Linux install that boots to nothing but a secure browser, stuck inside a virtual machine.
 
B00nie said:
It's actually excellent advice. There's absolutely no garantee as in ZERO that your computer is really clean after you get flagged by an antivirus. First of all they don't catch even near 100% of infections and in many cases they simply get pwned and chug happily along while infected.
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ok fine then reload it from a backup which is what I suggested in my previous post.

Formatting and installing from scratch is a last resort.
 
Another factor folks are forgetting is that all the major AVs get busted as the AV companies cant keep up. They are always 24+ hours behind the crime gangs.

As AV companies are so helpful in allowing constant monthly free trials of their wares the crime gangs can keep their labs fully stocked with all the main AVs to test against.

Write the new code to compromise some web sites for drivebys written that day, tested and found un-traceable by the AV its a case of 'release the hounds'.

Rinse and repeat on a 48 hour basis month after month.

Basically no matter what AV you use, if your number is up....
 
MSE+MalwareBytes+SuperAnti Spyware+Spybot. It's gonna be one tough nut of a virus/malware for it to come through.
 
daglesj said:
Another factor folks are forgetting is that all the major AVs get busted as the AV companies cant keep up. They are always 24+ hours behind the crime gangs.

As AV companies are so helpful in allowing constant monthly free trials of their wares the crime gangs can keep their labs fully stocked with all the main AVs to test against.

Write the new code to compromise some web sites for drivebys written that day, tested and found un-traceable by the AV its a case of 'release the hounds'.

Rinse and repeat on a 48 hour basis month after month.

Basically no matter what AV you use, if your number is up....
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It's a numbers game. Those on the forefront usually are okay, but if you haven't updated in days or weeks, you might get nailed. That's what the crooks bank on.
 
I keep forgetting to switch. I have some copies of Bit Defender, but after it had an issue with an updater for a game I played I never bothered installing it. I should get on that though. Luckily my PC seems to be running fine.
 
I think MSE is fine for its purpose and which is mainly to scan downloaded files before they are run. An AV is only as good as its known viral definitions and MSE is no better or worse than others in that area. The main reason to run alternatives would be non-viral protection against things like phishing and social engineering. Many people don't know how to read URLs and those are great features for those people.

Also, viruses that infect entire systems and propagate over networks are pretty much going away now that XP is disappearing. Most modern malware only resides in the user profile rather than draw attention to itself by trying to infect at a system level. It's still hard for the common user to detect but it's otherwise much easier to clean malware running in user space - you just delete the profile.

Personally, I prefer just using Firefox + NoScript. Those allow me to whitelist JavaScript only on those sites that I regularly visit and trust while still keeping blacklisted those external sites that hook into them with ads and so forth.
 
Methadras said:
It's a numbers game. Those on the forefront usually are okay, but if you haven't updated in days or weeks, you might get nailed. That's what the crooks bank on.
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Even daily updates can't save you because there always needs to be a 'patient zero' for AV companies to base their definitions on. The hospital where I work has been such a case where a new virus managed to infect almost a third of our systems a few years ago. All those systems had to be taken offline and reformatted while our AV vendor updated their definitions.

We always think that those kinds of things happen to other people. People think that they won't get a virus if they act responsibly when it's really more like getting struck by a drunk driver. It's mostly just bad luck.
 
Its been decades since I had a virus on my pc.

Really I dont recall having virus since my early Win XP days.

At some point I even stopped using AV. Once windows defender came out (or whatever its name was before) I started using it. That and adblock takes care of my needs.
 
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