Best Anti Virus

[bben46]

I side with Obobski on this. There is no 100% guaranteed perfect AV. The people who do serious AV testing usually release results quarterly and the AV that is on top one quarter may be well down the list the next. Instead of demanding the 'best' one. look at the last several years results and you will find several that consistently score in the top group. And several that consistently fight to get into the mid tier. They will typically list free and for pay AV separately with their various features.

 

Unfortunately, many of the free AV programs are constantly spamming you with nags to buy the pay version and making it difficult to find the free version. MSE (so far) hasn't stooped this low. Picking an AV is not just take the one on the top of this weeks list, but balancing out how intrusive it is, how does it handle false positives, what do you have to do to keep it up to date and is it really free? or just a free trial for a limited time? Then, some are notorious for being difficult to get rid of when you change to another AV. For many people MSE is a viable choice. It is not the 'best' but not the worst either. And typically scores somewhere in the middle of the pack. Which means it will catch most viruses, and does as well as any on the most common viruses that a normal user is likely to encounter.

 

A normal user being one who is not making it a habit to visit shady sites or download torrents from questionable sources. If you are not a normal user you probably need all the protection you can get. :rolleyes:

 

If I suspect a virus, I use a Linux based rescue disk to scan. Yes it does work on Windows, but does not load the Windows OS before scanning. (there are several available)

Then Malwarebytes and the Small fast JRT (Junkware Removal Tool) owned by Malwarebytes to remove trash such as browser hijackers and garbage toolbars.

These are updated constantly so always download the latest version before scanning. And there are always new tools showing up to try. Some may be added to my toolbox.

 

Nexus uses VirusTotal to scan each file when it is uploaded. VirusTotal is not intended to be a stand alone antivirus, but is meant to be used on one file at a time. It scans that one file with over 50 separate AV tools. Many that you have heard of such as the top name AV companies, and some you have never heard of. In order to filter out false positives, there must be multiple hits that identify a file as a possible virus before we quarantine it.
VirusTotal is FREE for non commercial limited use. But again it does not scan anything until you tell it to, and then only a single file or URL. It will NOT work for scanning an entire disk, or even an entire folder. It is intended for checking a suspicious file and can scan it before you download it. If you are interested in learning more, https://www.virustotal.com/en/

[GandhisLunchbox]

MalwareBytes and 360 Total Security work fine for me. Then again, I don't really need an anti-virus since I keep good care of what I'm doing.