Sonic

fujishig

Wait, the regular price for their security suite is 89.99 a year? Geez.

AGuyNamedMike

Well dang. I reckon it's Kaspersky or Avast then.

E Unit

Norton does a fine job. I buy the 10 device license for about $40 every year.

kd5

I just got the same email. Bitdefender will continue to offer tech support for Bitdefender Free until June 30, 2022. We have until then to select an alternative AV. The $9.98 price doesn't sound too bad but there's no way in hell I'm paying $90 when the first year is up. I'm too used to using free antivirus products, I'll just have to see what's out there. Avast! got too heavy-handed for my tastes, Norton always has been. AVG lost its popularity, Panda wasn't too bad when I used it, I wonder if their product update policy has changed (the definitions would auto update but you had to do product updates manually).

I'll just have to see what's out there.

Dammit! Bitdefender was the best free AV available...

hariseldon

There's always deals around

I think I bought a 2 year/15PC license for $30 for Bitdefender Family Pack -- covers my PC and Mobile devices and I'm still only at 10
I'm sure if you watch Newegg or various other sellers, you could find a deal for $10 a year esp if you just need a couple items covered.

Avast just got to ad crazy and did Avira nag screen, AVG just didn't fit well
Webroot I loved, but became increasingly difficult to find any deal on it.

Jay G.

I stopped using a 3rd party AntiVirus/AntiMalware once MS included anti-virus in Windows Defender, starting with Windows 8.

A Mozilla Engineer went on a rant about how 3rd Party AV isn't necessary anymore and actually makes it more difficult to develop and update Firefox:
https://www.neowin.net/news/ex-mozil...irus-software/

If you're really paranoid, you can supplement by occasionally running a free virus scanner like the Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool.
https://free.kaspersky.com/

morriscroy

In recent times, it appears a lot of malware/viruses come through the browsers and email. Especially through corrupt scripting.

Less often propogated through software, unless one is into running tons of pirated software and/or blindly double-clicking on corrupt email attachments.

In hindsight, running executables via double-clicking is the worst thing ever invented when it comes to security. Too easy for computer-illiterate types to run corrupt executable files out of ignorance/stupidity.

Josh-da-man

I have long been of the mind that the best bulwark against malware and viruses is using a secure browser like Firefox with an ad blocker, coupled with Gmail (which scans for executable files), and good judgment when it comes to things like clicking links and opening attachments instead of relying on scanners.

As soon as I switched to Firefox and Gmail fifteen or so years ago, I've never had any kind of problems with malware or viruses. I used to pick up shit like Gator all of the time with Internet Explorer and Windows 98.

The only antiviral software I use is Windows Defender as my primary, and use Malwarebytes once a month or so.

morriscroy

Back in the day, I was a long time Linux/BSD user that I rarely ever used Microsoft products during the 1990s and well into the early 2000s. I only ever used IE a few times, just to see for myself how easy it was to undermine with nasty scripts. For example, one IE script I came across made windows98 or windowsME look like it was running weird random text all over the desktop.



So I was a long time user of Netscape/Mozilla and eventually Firefox over the past 25+ years.

zyzzle

If you're the least bit savvy, you're running a browser with a good adblocker (eg, ublock orgin) as the barest minimum. And you *certainly* know not to blindly double-click dubious .exe's. That's stuff a 6-year-old should know by this late stage of the game.

And it's true that 95% and probably even 99% of virus problems / situations will be solved by taking this slightest sense of expediency...

It's far worse bogging down the whole system and slowing things down to a crawl with ad-infested Antivirus programs rather than taking the simple, simple out-of-the-box common-sense precaution just listed. Combined with Windows Defender, you're good to go without bloated antivirus products.

Of course, I go further, but just because I like a streamlined system without telemetry, Javascript, with good Hosts file, big Ramdrive for temporary junk like cookies, browser cache files etc. But 99% of people don't need to actually take those somewhat esoteric and paranoid measures.

Norm de Plume

Too bad about the loss of BitDefender, but I find Avast does the job proficiently at no cost. I run ESET Free, Emsisoft Emergency Kit, Malwarebytes, CCleaner, and Glary Utilities (for optimization) every once in a while. And VirusTotal is the infallible answer to inspect smaller files and URLs.

morriscroy

For many years on the computers I have to manage for the computer illiterates in my life, I have noscript and ublockorigin by default in the Firefox configurations.

They're "literate enough" to know how to hit the noscript button with the big exclamation mark "!", when a particular page looks too weird (or blank) without any scripting. (Ublockorigin usually ends up blocking more than half of the scripts in such cases). By default on noscript, I keep certain web sites with a few scripts for minimal functionality such as youtube. (ie. They don't have to load any further config files type stuff by hand).


Also for many file extension suffixes, they are deliberately redirected to be opened into "notepad" and not executed nor run by any msoffice suite programs. (Also set windows to always show the entire filename, including suffixes to the right of the "." in the full filename).

This greatly minimizes stupid/ignorant behavior of double-clicking on files.

morriscroy

I work from an assumption that stupid / ignorant behavior will happen, no matter what I say to these "computer illiterates" in my life. Saying something hundreds of times and yelling at them for their stupidity, will make absolutely zero difference.

No matter what they say otherwise, they will ALWAYS ask me to look at the computer whenever they encounter problems due to their stupidity / ignorance.

So how I set up the desktops (and laptops), is to make them as "idiot proof" as possible. This greatly cuts down on further "crisis" busywork for me, such as re-installing the entire operating system from a backup disc/drive.

Josh-da-man

I loathe that Windows defaults to this option.

Security issues aside, I want to see the extension on all of my files, even if they're just my files I'm looking at in Windows Explorer. It just looks neater and cleaner to have that little extension visible. I want to know if that video files is an .mp4, .avi, or .mkv. I want to know if that song is an .mp3 or an .m4a. If that image file is a .jpg or .png.

I have no idea why Windows defaults to no extensions.

X

Free 5 computer, 6 month license: https://sharewareonsale.com/s/free-b...y-100-discount

zyzzle

Yes, I have a special "idiot' script / batch file to run on all new installs of Windows, which does most of that stuff, get rid of much of the telemery, sets all wireless connections to "metered", disable "shared" bandwidth, etc. Always show file extensions, redirect .exe, dll extensions to open in notepad, etc. I also never understood the totally boneheaded decision by Microsoft to "hide" file extensions by default. I've streamlined and idiot-proofed as much of this as possible by a single-icon double-click script. It works well for 90% of idiots. The other 10% always figure out how to get around my idiot-proofing, somehow! You also need to leave in *some* sites with scripting enabled because they'll complain too loudly if the usual suspects like Google Maps, Youtube, Amazon fail to do certain things which force those sites to "require" active scripting. To me, that's a total failing of Amazon and Google and a "lazy" way of running sites. Those sites should run in a bare-bones scriptless environment, like they used to... before the age of bloat, and needless "cool" hipster web designers who really don't know anything of the oldschool. To them, the more bloated, and more pop-ups, the better.