General Discussions

We always get questions about antivirus apps so for anyone interested, Techradar posted this list of many of the major Antivirus products along with many of their best features and pricing plans.

Some work better with trainers than others. The one that seems to cause the most problems is BitDefender. Historically there have been a lot of reports about problems with Avast, Norton and Webroot using trainers but BitDefender is easily the king of problems as the most often reported A/V that causes the most trainer issues. Some of the Staff use only Windows Defender, common sense and caution when browsing.

Link

KingEli recently updated the videos for how to use many of the most popular Antivirus apps when using trainers. Those can be found here:

Link

It's always recommended that you thoroughly checkout any of them you might be interested in to be sure it does everything you want it to do.


Jaks



[Edited by Jaks, 1/18/2021 6:55:05 AM]

I personally use ESET and had been since about 2000 or 2001 where version 1 was a red pulsating zit. I find them good enough for everyday usage and very very light on the resources. I have used Bitdefender and it has an amazing engine however sadly the company doesn't execute their own program as well as 2nd party AV companies that lic the bitdefender engine. I honestly don't know why. It's like the Bitdefender engine team does not talk to the rest of the design/UI team...so the engine is great but the rest of the AV tend to be wonky or slows down the PC a bit. Kaspersky is an amazing piece of software and has amazing behavioral analytics (ESET is better) and amazing proactive defense (ESET is worse), actually KAV quite frankly has one of the best proactive defenses I have ever seen...however it comes with a performance hit...so there is that. Also, KAV has a very good real time cloud intelligence.

Personally I run ESET and VooDooShield, very light on the resources.

Benefit of VooDooShield is that if you sign up for free VirusTotal API Key and add it to VS, then VS will actually run the hash check of unknown executable against VT before allowing it to be fully executed, thus providing a nice 2nd opinion scanner. Also, Dave (the owner) is a cool dude, if you purchase a 3 year lic and e-mail him, then he will hook you up with a lifetime key.

[Edited by GrammatonClerik, 11/20/2020 11:43:57 PM]

Great post Jaks, and thanks to KingEli for the well made videos 😎

As you also mentioned, I also believe in only using Windows Defender and common sense. Don't click around like a maniac on the internet, and don't click every link you see just because it has an inviting color to it.

Also in my opinion it is better to keep that 60 bucks or whatnot in my bank account instead of paying for an application that does the same thing as Windows Defender. Cleanup features and the things like that are not worth it for me.

Unfortunately common sense has been discontinued and replaced by social media. 😋

I use Sophos-Home Premium.

Works great

My pleasure 🙂

If you do use Defender then make sure to tweak it via Admin Page or Regedit.

You can turn your windows defender into a full blown anti-persistent thereat actors suite. The cloud protection that is turn on by default is very weak. You can join MS MAPS program and also enable "delay execution until confirmation from the cloud" I personally love what Defender has become since it's old days when MS initially acquired a 2nd opinion scanner and turned it into defender. The only problem I have with defender is it's footprint. It's quite heavy on the resources since it's not written in assembly unlike ESET.

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/microsoft-defender-antivirus/enable-cloud-protection-microsoft-defender-antivirus

[Edited by GrammatonClerik, 11/22/2020 10:03:21 PM]

[Edited by GrammatonClerik, 11/22/2020 10:05:05 PM]