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So does that mean of the 2000, that 200 were OK? Care to give us a list?

The answer to your questions, including the full list, are in the first link from the summary. Please, learn to use your left mousse button before posting on slashdot.

The good ones, according to the article from the second link, are:

Twenty-three apps did detect all malware samples AV-Comparatives threw at them, including Tom's Guide's top three picks: Bitdefender Mobile Security, Norton Mobile Security and Avast Mobile Security.

Our sixth-place pick, Psafe DFNDR, was also in the 100-percent category, although AV-Comparatives noted that DFNDR used Avast's antivirus engine and had not updated itself to run properly on Android 8 Oreo and later. Lookout Mobile Security, our No. 5 pick, was a little behind the others with 99.6 percent. (Google's own Play Protect antivirus software did poorly, with a detection rate of only 69 percent.

OK, they're ALL out to get you. If you didn't pay for it, you're the product. I fear my local government more than a far-away one. I'm a minnow, no some plankton living in the social/financial sea. It's only metadata. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. Ever uploaded something to VirusTotal/Google/MS/Amazon? If it's unencrypted in the cloud, it's probably now on someone's ELSE's cloud too. If encrypted, it's still fair game. KAV have good reviews. So I'll just leave this here and get my coat,

OVERVIEW
https://www.pcworld.com/articl...
https://www.av-test.org/en/ant...
http://chart.av-comparatives.o...

Free
https://usa.kaspersky.com/free...
https://www.bitdefender.com/su...
https://www.malwarebytes.com/m...
https://www.avira.com/en/free-...
https://home.sophos.com/
https://www.pandasecurity.com/...

Just PICK one just as long as it's not the default MS Defender. They couldn't stop it from getting in to start with, what makes you think their AV is going to do better?

other than the fact microsoft's is pure garbage? nahh. no other reason at all. read independent reviews and get off the windows defender/mse bandwagon.. it has crashed and burned years ago

too lazy to read? here, click this choose your vendor, look for the stars. advanced+ 3 stars is best. microsoft is garbage.

avira or kaspersky (and knock it with the anti kaspersky shit, too.. you're just eating up bullshit from the fake news channels and this administration) or bitdefender. all three offer free products. all three excel. all three are infinitely better than the crap microsoft offers.... *mcafee* and *trend* are better than microsoft's, ffs.

captcha: crummy

other than the fact microsoft's is pure garbage? nahh. no other reason at all. read independent reviews and get off the windows defender/mse bandwagon.. it has crashed and burned years ago

too lazy to read? here, click this choose your vendor, look for the stars. advanced+ 3 stars is best. microsoft is garbage.

avira or kaspersky (and knock it with the anti kaspersky shit, too.. you're just eating up bullshit from the fake news channels and this administration) or bitdefender. all three offer free products. all three excel. all three are infinitely better than the crap microsoft offers.... *mcafee* and *trend* are better than microsoft's, ffs.

captcha: crummy

other than the fact microsoft's is pure garbage? nahh. no other reason at all. read independent reviews and get off the windows defender/mse bandwagon.. it has crashed and burned years ago

too lazy to read? here, click this choose your vendor, look for the stars. advanced+ 3 stars is best. microsoft is garbage.

avira or kaspersky (and knock it with the anti kaspersky shit, too.. you're just eating up bullshit from the fake news channels and this administration) or bitdefender. all three offer free products. all three excel. all three are infinitely better than the crap microsoft offers.... *mcafee* and *trend* are better than microsoft's, ffs.

captcha: crummy

other than the fact microsoft's is pure garbage? nahh. no other reason at all. read independent reviews and get off the windows defender/mse bandwagon.. it has crashed and burned years ago

too lazy to read? here, click this choose your vendor, look for the stars. advanced+ 3 stars is best. microsoft is garbage.

avira or kaspersky (and knock it with the anti kaspersky shit, too.. you're just eating up bullshit from the fake news channels and this administration) or bitdefender. all three offer free products. all three excel. all three are infinitely better than the crap microsoft offers.... *mcafee* and *trend* are better than microsoft's, ffs.

captcha: crummy

other than the fact microsoft's is pure garbage? nahh. no other reason at all. read independent reviews and get off the windows defender/mse bandwagon.. it has crashed and burned years ago

too lazy to read? here, click this choose your vendor, look for the stars. advanced+ 3 stars is best. microsoft is garbage.

avira or kaspersky (and knock it with the anti kaspersky shit, too.. you're just eating up bullshit from the fake news channels and this administration) or bitdefender. all three offer free products. all three excel. all three are infinitely better than the crap microsoft offers.... *mcafee* and *trend* are better than microsoft's, ffs.

captcha: crummy

What's funny is seeing it in the AV Comparatives report. I don't know if they included it seriously or as a joke, but page 29 is pretty funny.

I use Bit Defender and it didn't react at all like what I could read here (i.e. RAM filled etc,..) It's not taxing my computers like I've seen other packages do and it's not nagging me constantly. I think the heuristic scan graph should be evaluated, from https://chart.av-comparatives.... , NOT the file detection which relies on known patterns. Heuristic will be much more taxing for your CPU/RAM and also shows the logic of an AV. (Windows) Defender is the base of comparison in this chart, just to show how low it is... Bit Defender is the big dog in this chart.

While I agree that bundling is a nefarious action, I also would like to point out the serious inferiority of your (ahem) "similarly priced" (ahem) products, when compared to the bundled product.

Even if the defender product was not bundled with windows, I find it very likely that users would prefer it

Actually, Kaspersky Lab makes some of the highest rated AV tools. Windows Defender is far less effective. You don't take my word for it either.

over your advertisment laden, system resource hogging, nagscreen insistent offering of similar price.

If you don't like the ads, just fork over some money. If you don't like paying money for software then you shouldn't be using Windows.

You are ill informed if that's what you think. Microsoft's AV consistently ranks as one of the worst in all comparisons.

Windows defender sucks ass. See here: https://www.av-test.org/en/ant...

Far below industry average. So yes AV is still relevant. For more data, try here: http://www.av-comparatives.org...

And other website are saying defender is getting quite decent, especially for a free/no installation AV : http://www.pcworld.com/article...

Furthermore, the core of my point is that no virus are supposed to reach that last layer of defence. Unless you are dependant on animal porn?

Far below industry average. So yes AV is still relevant. For more data, try here: http://www.av-comparatives.org...

I'm flummoxed here. One one hand, you're obviously smart and competent to be aware of such things. On the other, WTF MAN were you thinking??!!! AVG IS SHIT; and has been for years. Why?? Might I recommend something like Bitdefender (my personal trusted favorite), Norton AV, or even Kaspersky?

Thanks for the heads-up. Yes, Bitdefender and Kaspersky are on my radar as excellent products (and av-comparatives.org agrees with you) and I guess I could say there's a great deal of loyalty in my choice. I've been following AVG the company since the days 'Stoned' was still making the rounds and they've been consistent. Like any PC tech, my clients have run the gamut of the corporate "Just give me the bottom line and I'll write you a check" ... to users who say "If I have to buy something else, it'll have to come out of your fee." For the latter I have always (gratefully) left them with AVG Free, which was the first robust $0 anti-virus package introduced. The only major cleanup required so far being instances where someone's kid turned it off and left it off. And a case where someone accidentally opted for an 'upgrade' to an AVG product with a trial period.

But I was also an early adopter of NoScript and coach my clients on its use, tolerance of minor formatting problems with js disabled, and the general value of whitelisting as opposed to buying into schemes where your browser needs to do continuous lookups for blacklisting. Noscript, no toolbars, no 'Web TuneUp'. This leaves few attack vectors.

I've had massive XP uptimes on my machine and only had AVG go ballistic bananas once in a way that locked the system... when I was trying to install a media product that turned out to be building a bunch of EXE files on the fly with hundreds of separate writes, instead of just assembling the damned things first and renaming to EXE when done. Of course the developers shrugged this off as AVG's fault and the only solution being to disable it, but I gave AVG a pass, it was just trying to re-scan on every write... I was more intrigued by the developers' claim that no other anti-virus objected.

As to that massive difference between the number of unique signatures AVG and some other products detect... such as reported by virustotal... I'm a little suspicious of that too. No, we AVG users have not experienced the 'avalanche of intrusions' that would be implied by such a difference in numbers. Whenever I am called in to diagnose a weird problem I have done secure checkup scans with Malwarebytes and/or Kaspersky to see if anything major slipped through. Aside from some latent/whocares tracking stuff in browser cache, I haven't found anything major/active that AVG missed. Guess I lead a charmed life!

First off, ignore everyone who recommends Microsoft Security Essentials and/or Windows Defender. Google why - it sucks, totally worthless.

Second, the person who recommended http://www.av-comparatives.org... is wise. Look over their reports over the past few years, as well as http://www.av-test.org/. You will see that Avira, AVG, and Avast are very good products (all free). Some are more bloated that others - I prefer Avast, personally.

NOD32 by Eset used to be known as have the least-impacting AV product - no popups, silent gamer mode, low CPU and disk utilization, etc. It is not free.

I only resort to HijackThis or MalwareBytes when helping someone who already has some form of malware/virus. Safe browsing habits and a decent AV product will protect you just fine.

AVG was it's own company, then got bought by Intel, IIRC.

The person who recommended SandBoxie is also wise. It is a great product to use when you want to browse a site you are unsure about. My biggest complaint about Avast is that is dislikes SandBoxie - to get it to configure settings that I am uncomfortable disabling, so I gave up on using SandBoxie.

I only looked at ClamWin years ago - it did not have an on-access component, it only did disk scans. If this is still true I do not recommend it. You want an on-access scanner that can protect you as soon it it is read or written.

For free, I recommend Avast. For money, Trend Micro and BitDefender always perform well, and I would consider ESET, too.

There's a lot of people saying Microsoft Security Essentials or Windows Defender. That was a great answer a few years ago, it's not now. It's near the bottom of of the lists in rankings on most tests. For those saying don't use any AV, stop posting please. You're not impressing anyone by trying to be l33t prosauce internet surfer. http://www.av-comparatives.org... http://www.av-test.org/en/anti... https://www.virusbtn.com/vb100... http://www.tomsguide.com/us/be... http://www.lifehacker.co.uk/20... Nowhere on ay of those links will you find someone saying that MSE/Defender is a good choice.

I'm really surprised more people aren't recommending Bit Defender. I use the free version on my own machines and install it on customer PCs, and have had very good results from it. Never pops up asking to upgrade to a premium version, doesn't audibly announce it's updating/scanning/etc (in fact you'll only know it's there if something goes wrong). It also doesn't impact performance very much at all -- way better than Avast or AVG. According to http://www.av-comparatives.org..., they're always at the top of their game.

After reviewing this link: http://chart.av-comparatives.o... I will use either ESET or Kaspersky instead of Trend Micro. I may still use MalwareBytes with MS Defender.

Even the paid version of AVG now spams pop-up advertisements. Definitely do not go with that.

I tend to use AV comparatives as one place to compare how anti-virus products are stacking up:
http://www.av-comparatives.org...

Is Your Antivirus Tracking You? You'd Be Surprised At What It Sends

by Chris Hoffman, 28th May, 2014, MakeUseOf.com

#

PLEASE READ THE PDF. THE QUOTE FROM THIS ARTICLE DRAWS REFERENCE TO WEB URLs BUT IN ORDER TO PROPERLY COMPREHEND THE MAGNITUDE OF DATA COLLECTION, YOU NEED TO READ THE PDF. PREPARE TO BE FLOORED.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF. STORE IT. CONVERT IT TO OTHER FORMATS. SHARE IT. MAKE SURE IT IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE SOMEWHERE ON-LINE OTHER THAN THE SOURCE BELOW. DON'T BLINDLY TRUST ARCHIVE.ORG OR SITES LIKE IT TO KEEP IT FOR YOU.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS PDF BEFORE CONTINUING TO USE ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAMS.

#

        "Your antivirus software is watching you. A recent study shows that popular antivirus applications like Avast assign your computer a unique identifier and send a list of all web addresses you visit to the manufacturer. If the antivirus finds a suspicious document, it will send the document to the antivirus company. Yes, your antivirus company might have a list of web pages you've visited along with your sensitive personal documents!

        AV-Comparatives' Data Transmission Report

        We're getting this information from AV-Comparative's Data transmission in Internet security products report, released on May 8, 2014. AV-Comparatives is an antivirus testing and comparison organization.

        The study was performed by analyzing antivirus products running in a virtual machine to see what they sent to the antivirus company, reading each antivirus product's end user license agreement (EULA), and sending a detailed questionnaire to each antivirus company so they could explain what their products do........""

#

Rest of article and comments here:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/a... .PDF - The Study, dated May 20, 2014:
http://www.av-comparatives.org... .PDF-To-Images Free 0n-Line Viewer:
http://view.samurajdata.se/

"Is Your Antivirus Tracking You? You'd Be Surprised At What It Sends"
by Chris Hoffman, 28th May, 2014, MakeUseOf.com

############

PLEASE READ THE PDF. THE QUOTE FROM THIS ARTICLE DRAWS REFERENCE TO WEB URLs BUT IN ORDER TO PROPERLY COMPREHEND THE MAGNITUDE OF DATA COLLECTION, YOU NEED TO READ THE PDF. PREPARE TO BE FLOORED.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF. STORE IT. CONVERT IT TO OTHER FORMATS. SHARE IT. MAKE SURE IT IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE SOMEWHERE ON-LINE OTHER THAN THE SOURCE BELOW. DON'T BLINDLY TRUST ARCHIVE.ORG OR SITES LIKE IT TO KEEP IT FOR YOU.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS PDF BEFORE CONTINUING TO USE ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAMS.

############

        "Your antivirus software is watching you. A recent study shows that popular antivirus applications like Avast assign your computer a unique identifier and send a list of all web addresses you visit to the manufacturer. If the antivirus finds a suspicious document, it will send the document to the antivirus company. Yes, your antivirus company might have a list of web pages you've visited along with your sensitive personal documents!

        AV-Comparatives' Data Transmission Report

        We're getting this information from AV-Comparative's Data transmission in Internet security products report, released on May 8, 2014. AV-Comparatives is an antivirus testing and comparison organization.

        The study was performed by analyzing antivirus products running in a virtual machine to see what they sent to the antivirus company, reading each antivirus product's end user license agreement (EULA), and sending a detailed questionnaire to each antivirus company so they could explain what their products do........""

############

Rest of article and comments here:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/a... .PDF - The Study, dated May 20, 2014:
http://www.av-comparatives.org... .PDF-To-Images Free 0n-Line Viewer:
http://view.samurajdata.se/

"Is Your Antivirus Tracking You? You'd Be Surprised At What It Sends"
by Chris Hoffman, 28th May, 2014, MakeUseOf.com

############

PLEASE READ THE PDF. THE QUOTE FROM THIS ARTICLE DRAWS REFERENCE TO WEB URLs BUT IN ORDER TO PROPERLY COMPREHEND THE MAGNITUDE OF DATA COLLECTION, YOU NEED TO READ THE PDF. PREPARE TO BE FLOORED.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF. STORE IT. CONVERT IT TO OTHER FORMATS. SHARE IT. MAKE SURE IT IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE SOMEWHERE ON-LINE OTHER THAN THE SOURCE BELOW. DON'T BLINDLY TRUST ARCHIVE.ORG OR SITES LIKE IT TO KEEP IT FOR YOU.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS PDF BEFORE CONTINUING TO USE ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAMS.

############

        "Your antivirus software is watching you. A recent study shows that popular antivirus applications like Avast assign your computer a unique identifier and send a list of all web addresses you visit to the manufacturer. If the antivirus finds a suspicious document, it will send the document to the antivirus company. Yes, your antivirus company might have a list of web pages you've visited along with your sensitive personal documents!

        AV-Comparatives' Data Transmission Report

        We're getting this information from AV-Comparative's Data transmission in Internet security products report, released on May 8, 2014. AV-Comparatives is an antivirus testing and comparison organization.

        The study was performed by analyzing antivirus products running in a virtual machine to see what they sent to the antivirus company, reading each antivirus product's end user license agreement (EULA), and sending a detailed questionnaire to each antivirus company so they could explain what their products do........""

############

Rest of article and comments here:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/a... .PDF - The Study, dated May 20, 2014:
http://www.av-comparatives.org... .PDF-To-Images Free 0n-Line Viewer:
http://view.samurajdata.se/

"Is Your Antivirus Tracking You? You'd Be Surprised At What It Sends"

by Chris Hoffman, 28th May, 2014, MakeUseOf.com

############

PLEASE READ THE PDF. THE QUOTE FROM THIS ARTICLE DRAWS REFERENCE TO WEB URLs BUT IN ORDER TO PROPERLY COMPREHEND THE MAGNITUDE OF DATA COLLECTION, YOU NEED TO READ THE PDF. PREPARE TO BE FLOORED.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF. STORE IT. CONVERT IT TO OTHER FORMATS. SHARE IT. MAKE SURE IT IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE SOMEWHERE ON-LINE OTHER THAN THE SOURCE BELOW. DON'T BLINDLY TRUST ARCHIVE.ORG TO KEEP IT FOR YOU.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS PDF BEFORE CONTINUING TO USE ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAMS.

############

        "Your antivirus software is watching you. A recent study shows that popular antivirus applications like Avast assign your computer a unique identifier and send a list of all web addresses you visit to the manufacturer. If the antivirus finds a suspicious document, it will send the document to the antivirus company. Yes, your antivirus company might have a list of web pages you've visited along with your sensitive personal documents!

        AV-Comparatives' Data Transmission Report

        We're getting this information from AV-Comparative's Data transmission in Internet security products report, released on May 8, 2014. AV-Comparatives is an antivirus testing and comparison organization.

        The study was performed by analyzing antivirus products running in a virtual machine to see what they sent to the antivirus company, reading each antivirus product's end user license agreement (EULA), and sending a detailed questionnaire to each antivirus company so they could explain what their products do........""

############

Rest of article and comments here:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/a...

.PDF - The Study, dated May 20, 2014:
http://www.av-comparatives.org...

.PDF-To-Images Free 0n-Line Viewer:
http://view.samurajdata.se/

Good anti-virus still has high detection rates. AV Comparitives puts most virus scanners above 90% detection in their March real world protection test. The better ones are in the 98%+ range. http://www.av-comparatives.org...

Of course Symantec isn't on that list... perhaps there's a reason :).

By update I was speaking of definition updates. Without them, the software can't detect a new form of virus.

I wasn't, because the difference between a software patch and a definition update is the time it takes to produce them.

So, either the virus is using a known mechanism/payload/etc or not.

True, focus on detecting has shifted to looking at payloads rather than mechanisms now, because payloads are harder to make a different.

If it is, then the OS will be patched against it, and the virus won't be able to install a rootkit/etc.

If it is, then it has a low reputation and will be blocked with the right security settings anyway (admittedly, I have that type of functionality turned off on my machines because I develop software too, anti-virus software putting my compiled applications into quarantine or deleting is annoying).

What makes you think that a heuristic scanner will be able to discover a virus, but the OS vendor won't be able to patch the vulnerability that allowed it in?

A recent example is Oracle's recent struggle with Java vulnerabilities: https://blogs.oracle.com/secur...

They were unable to patch their software fast enough to close all the zero days. I was able to define rules in anti-virus to block unauthorized issues in Java however.

You claim the time required to update a definition vs patch a vulnerability is significantly different, but I don't really see any evidence supporting this.

I just gave you some.

I'm sure your systems are completely vulnerable to a comet impact that destroys all life on earth, and that is because the risk of that happening is low compared to the effort required to mitigate it.

I generally work off using requirements, ie: Must be protected against cyber threats, physical access requirements against an armed person, isolated networks etc.

I also suggest new requirements to add to those and raise risks around certain implementations.

Besides, what is your alternative?

I would need a set of requirements to work with first and some time to research the options. Something that I don't really want to do for this conversation.

I'm not aware of any other OS that provides the same kind of security/etc for anywhere near the same cost as ChromeOS.

I don't really deal with things on a consumer level, but, it wouldn't be unlikely to get a good deal with certain PC vendors for getting X amount of units for a fairly cheap price. So, money is not exactly a thing I worry too much about in my current line of work.

The last virus-related issue we had at work was a few years ago when McAfee deployed a definition update that quarantined a critical system file - half the company was down for a few days while everybody brought their PCs in for servicing.

McAfee isn't that great of a piece of anti-virus software. If you visit http://www.av-comparatives.org... you will find that it's often near the bottom when it comes to comparisons (even a few years ago). So, it doesn't surprise me you ran into problems with a piece of software that does not really excel in good quality.

It does have one of the better enterprise management control panels however, but I don't think this makes up for it's poor (or lack of) heuristic scanner and depends almost entirely on cloud connection for doing that sort of analysis.

Something like that would be virtually impossible on ChromeOS since the whole OS image is device-specific and updated as a unit, so if one doesn't boot none of them will (so only an idiot would miss it in testing).

Anecdotal evidence is usually not all that useful. Real statistics are more reliable: http://chart.av-comparatives.o...

Not as good as it used to be, we run Forefront which uses the same definitions and have had a number of things get through it as of late.

MSE used to be good, but MS seems to have really slipped up last couple of years. They have fallen to the bottom of all the tests, that they use to be in the top of, and even if you don't believe in tests, more and more real-world reports of things slipping through, like poster above here. It has gotten so bad that MS themselves now publicly recommend that their customers use additional 3rd party AV. That is pretty damning.

The test you refer to (not tests) is a notoriously vendor-driven one, which really has no credence with the larger AV community. And there's a bit of misinterpretation; MSE is designed to be compatible with another AV solution, so that the two can coexist. This is made possible by the fact that MSE integrates with Windows as only a Microsoft product could. MS didn't say "don't use our solution all by itself, the MSE r h4x0red!"

Actually, I refer to tests. I guess you are probably referring to the beating they got in AV-Test, since MS publicly complained about that. But here is another one (look at bottom of graph page 9 or summary of results page 13 - zero stars to MSE). And here is another one, from the test lab used by PC Pro and others (see results page 7 and 8, not good).

Where did you get the notion that MSE is designed to co-exist with another AV-solution? Microsoft strongly recommends against this, it is the first line in their FAQ. If you have third party AV running when you install MSE it recommends to disable it. Which in almost all cases today would be a downgrade of your protection.

These tests evaluate the impact of anti-virus software on system performance, as programs running in background – such as real time protection antivirus software -
  AV-comparatives performance chart
For more in depth see:
  Performance-Test (AV) May 2013 PDF

NOD32 is very fast, its core is written in assembly. source from NOD32, see performance

These tests evaluate the impact of anti-virus software on system performance, as programs running in background – such as real time protection antivirus software -
  AV-comparatives performance chart
For more in depth see:
  Performance-Test (AV) May 2013 PDF

NOD32 is very fast, its core is written in assembly. source from NOD32, see performance

AV Comparatives Real-World Protection Test

Actually doesn't look too bad compared to the others. I'm sure that's much more Intel's doing than this batshit crazy anal bath salts guy.

They actually do test for performance under the usability category, and their results (bitdefender as top pick) matches the results from the well respected AV Comparatives, and the rest of their results arent much different-- those top 3 you mention are all AV Comparatives top picks ( http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/docs/avc_sum_201212_en.pdf )

Might have been nice if you actually did some research before spouting off.

According to the same site, MSE also misses lots of samples, which I've experienced myself as well: http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/docs/avc_fdt_201209_en.pdf

Many of the vectors of malware these days is through java/flash exploits, I always disable the java plugin in my browser and have flash click to play. I do have MSE on my computers and MalwareBytes for a monthly search and haven't run into any issues in many years. MSE has the least bloat/memory footprint AND the lowest false positive rating http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/docs/avc_fdt_201209_en.pdf puts it at 0, if you're getting hit by 0 day malware you're just not pirating software/being cautious enough with where you browse and no program will 100% save you. For family members I've always installed avast, it's slightly more intrusive but turn on 'silent/gaming mode' and it's not too bad other than putting in an email address once a year.

-Microsoft's MSE
-Avira
-Avast
-AVG

are realtime scanners that are decent. ClamWin doesn't have one last time I checked, and effectiveness wasn't that great to begin with

Though third party validated effectiveness of MSE seems to vary month to month (one month it's top tier, next month it's the bottom) http://www.av-comparatives.org/ I prefer installing MSE on people's computers because it's hands-off to keep it updated where after a year or so Avast or AVG will bug and nag for an upgrade, and there's a higher chance of running unprotected.

In one case with Avira, on a machine it was over a year out of date, yet the umbrella was sitting there in the tray happily deployed without even a nag!

I did see someone bring up a good point that a lot of fake-antivirus popups are designed to "look" like MSE.

http://av-comparatives.org/

This tests a lot of antivirus and shows you their detection rate, false-positive rate, etc.

I myself promote Avira Antivir, which is lightweight, does well on AV-Comparatives.org, and is gratis.

Of course, the best solution is to install Ubuntu; if you choose it, I can give you free support over email.

And remember: any Windows antivirus (even, to a lesser degree, Ubuntu) will only attenuate the problem. You are _not_ safe just because you have a good antivirus (or run Ubuntu). You _must_ take care: don't go to rogue sites, don't execute untrusted executables, don't use pirated software, etc.

Good luck.

I'd recommend looking around to see what other anti-virus products there are. There are a few good review sites out there for antivirus:

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/
http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/summary-reports

BitDefender, Kasperskey, Norton, and F-Secure all seem to be putting out good products.

Try doing some research for yourself, next time.

I can't give you a good virus scanner for Mac as I don't know yet. Macs are a new part of my responsibilities at work so I've only done some research. I can say Sophos does have a Mac virus scanner, Sophos is what we license at work. However I can also say fuck Sophos, I hate it and would not recommend it.

As for catch rate, no it is much better than that. Good virus scanners tend to get 98% or more. There is some balance between higher catch rate and too many false positives, but you can have few false positives with a 98% or better rate. The very best tend to be 99.5-99.9% catch rate.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_od_aug2010.pdf for the latest results. The AV Comparatives site has more overall data for other kinds of tests too.

Perfect? No but nothing in the world is. If you demand only perfection you end up missing out on everything because nothing meets your impossible standard.

Security is a process, not a product. There are no "decent" AV products, if by decent you mean will prevent a standard, internet-connected Windows computer from getting viruses/malware. Detection rates for zero-day attacks seems to be, at best, 62%. Installing an antivirus and thinking you're 100% protected against viruses is delusional.

Furthermore, these are ambulance dispatch computers. The operators are not your typical slashdotter that can spot potential malware and avoid installing it. They also, given the random nature of emergency medicine, have a lot of freetime in which they likely entertain themselves using these computers while waiting on someone to need an ambulance. I suppose one could have separate networks and computers for mission-critical applications, but is that really the best way to spend healthcare dollars?

instead of opinions and conjecture, here are some numbers about which is better: linky

Security Essentials is good, but I've been enjoying Avira without incident since this report came out.

The proof is in the pudding: even if you're right, and Microsoft is truly doing all that it can in this regard (and, let's be clear here, it is not) whatever they are doing is not enough. Not nearly enough.

So let's see. You originally tried to prove your original ascertian that Microsoft ignores home users by saying that they made a mistake about the Internet over 15 years ago, then misrepresented the current state of Windows security to be like it was 6 years ago, and now you say that while they might not be ignoring those user's needs, what they are doing for them is not enough. I am sure that if we wait long enough, you will try to prove your original statement by saying that 8.3 filename limits are user-unfriendly! Go on! I would love to reminisce about the 80s.

If you've ever spent an evening cleaning malware from a badly infected Windows system, you will understand exactly what I'm talking about.

Yes, I have done that. But I haven't had to do that in quite a while. These days, I can set up a system using pretty much the default configuration (but with non-administrator accounts plus MSE). I don't remember the last time I had to fix up a virused system. It does help my that my family and friends have heard my nags enough times that they don't run random executables that are sent to them.

Of the dozen infections that I had to clean from a friend's computer last night, you know how many that free Microsoft package found? One guess. That's right. ZERO. I had to run several different scanners to get rid of most of them (a couple I had to remove the hard way, removing entries from the registry and manually deleting executables.)

I can't speak about a setup that I hadn't seen - perhaps this friend was one of those people who turns off UAC and runs as administrator because otherwise it is annoying. But in general, no antivirus solution will catch everything. You yourself said that you had to use several different scanners to catch the infections. I do wonder how many of those infections were false positives or "dangerous" advertiser cookies. And maybe that computer already ran MSE so that it had already blocked the malware that it could handle. Or maybe the friend and his computer didn't exist. I'm sorry, but the way you are wildly and desperately throwing around unrelated and out-of-date Microsoft complaints to justify your original statement, I just can't completely trust your story.

However, if you google "microsoft security essential review" then you will find quite a number of reviews that all tend to conclude that while MSE doesn't catch everything, it is lightweight and a good free solution. My google of "anti virus comparison" gave me http://www.av-comparatives.org/ as the first match. The first PDF of results I found there showed MSE had a 97.6% detection rate. Not the top of the list, but not the bottom either. Does that result really warrant your vitriol about this product? No.

The fact that there are security holes in Windows doesn't prove that Microsoft doesn't care. The only thing that would is if they hadn't made any improvements to the operating system over the years. Do you really believe that Windows 7 is a bad a XP when it was first released? How about Windows ME?

While I think it's atrocious that Windows has to have a third-party layer akin to the FDA to keep users from getting waylaid by malicious code, I'm a little surprised that you think Avast is better than NOD32 or Kaspersky. The most recent AV-Comparatives report is rather unflattering to Avast. I'm personally a NOD32 (ESET) fan.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report26.pdf

Any operating system needs some sort of code checking layer if it wants to stop users from installing malware. This is nothing special for Windows, and the security model in Win7 is just as good as OSX and other OSs (actually, as the winner of the Pwn2Own competition and other security experts point out, its in many respects better, se below).

The self-spreading silent virues of many years ago are no longer the major threat on Windows either. A huge for-profit malware industry using social engineering and targeting the biggest market is.

Hacker: Windows More Secure Than Mac OS X:

It is of the opinion of Charlie Miller, a well known Mac security guru, that even Snow Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X, isn't as safe as Windows.

Winner mocks OS X hacking contest:

Why Safari? Why didn’t you go after IE or Safari?

It’s really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit. The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don’t do. Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don’t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you’d find in Windows.

It’s more about the operating system than the (target) program. Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too. The underlying OS doesn’t have anti-exploit stuff built into it.

While I think it's atrocious that Windows has to have a third-party layer akin to the FDA to keep users from getting waylaid by malicious code, I'm a little surprised that you think Avast is better than NOD32 or Kaspersky. The most recent AV-Comparatives report is rather unflattering to Avast. I'm personally a NOD32 (ESET) fan.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report26.pdf

Symantec currently makes a great security solution. Instead of following religious dogma or popular opinion bashing you should do some research and fact checking for yourself. They did go through a pretty bad spot for a while so the criticism isn't unwarranted but it's no longer accurate. I always recommend people review their security solutions annually. Sometimes a good vendor can go through problems and not be the optimal solution through a given software version. Both Kaspersky and AVG have had serious problems as well.

Symantec, Kaspersky, AVG, MBAM and several other major vendors have pretty good support forums to help users. What is wrong with your point is that it relies on FUD to support it not facts.

Symantec provides local, intranet, and remote backup solutions. I would guess this acquisition is to support their products and provide their user base with a more secure solution.

I'm posting AC because I'm moderating and no I didn't mod you down even though your "informative" post isn't really all that informative or insightful.

I use Nod32 on my corporate network and at home, and can highly recommend it, but this doesn't fit the 'free' specification. AV comparatives is a great independent site where they do regular testing (several times a year) including both free and paid AV software: http://www.av-comparatives.org/

is there a way to evaluate antivirus software? i mean, after it's 1.) no popups, 2.) not bloaty 3.) easy on the system 4.) convenient to use... how do you know if it actually works?

There are sites that test AV products, two are:

Virus Bulletin and AV-Comparatives.

These can be used to get an idea of the effectiveness of the product. As for 1, 2, 3 and 4 just trying the product will tell you about it. If one of those issues causes problems, discard the AV product and get another, this goes especially for the "easy on the system" requirement.

whoa - you're making apple fans seem indifferent.

nah seriously - its not a bad product by all accounts i've read.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/ is the place to go for reviews on anti-virus software.

My preference is Avira. The free version is great if you can tolerate the popup every time you boot up. I hardly use windows so its not a big deal for me.

Another +1 for Avira.

The paid version always scores superbly (i.e. it is almost always in the top three) in the AV-Comparatives tests 1, 2 (although its award status often suffers due to a slightly higher than average number of false positives). If the quality of the paid versions has any bearing on that of the free versions, Avira absolutely smashes AVG and Avast!.

Another +1 for Avira.

The paid version always scores superbly (i.e. it is almost always in the top three) in the AV-Comparatives tests 1, 2 (although its award status often suffers due to a slightly higher than average number of false positives). If the quality of the paid versions has any bearing on that of the free versions, Avira absolutely smashes AVG and Avast!.

I check the scored on Virus Bulletin http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archive/results?display=summary and AV Comparitives http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/summary/summary2009.pdf to get the best available. I have used Avast! for years with great success, and recently started using Microsoft Security Essentials, both of which are VB100 rated. I like the small footprint of the new MS offering, and the fact that it has such a high detection and low false-positive rating. So far so good, even on my in-laws' laptop.