I just had a new PC built that has Norton on it, but I've heard Norton's pretty bad and uninstalled it. What virus protection is recommended?
Thank you.
>>155676
Adblocker in browser and the default windows one
I use Linux though
In my opinion, avira is the best free ones and comodo or kypersky are the best paid ones.
>>155684
What about ESET? I'm seeing positive mentions of that in the archive.
I just wen to avg. Prettygood.
I use Avira. I've read it's decent but that was a few years ago lol. It also has annoying popups (which you can block but I've been too lazy do so).
Also you might want to use this website: https://virustotal.com/
It aggregates many antivirus products and can be very useful. If I'm suspicious about something I first scan it with my antivirus and then I use virustotal just to be sure.
I haven't used an antivirus in 7 years without issue. I think antivirus is mostly a placebo. If you're careful while browsing you don't really need one. Between noscript and windows security essentials what good would an antivirus do except eat up more RAM?
>>155730
I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took a BIOS flash virus to the knee. That was before the days of dual BIOS, so I actually had to get my motherboard replaced. I've had better days.
Of course, that was way back; not many BIOS flashing viruses going around these days (heck, BIOS itself is dying). Even so, while I wouldn't pay for antivirus, but I wouldn't go without a free one either. If you're worried about resources, turn it off while gaming or something. Otherwise, good antivirus only uses idle resources and isn't noticeable. Crap antivirus will demand you pay lots of attention to it, but that's why it's crap.
Yes, if you're not an asshole opening every dodgy email attachment someone sends you, most of the time it will do nothing. But that one time it could save your bacon makes up for it, as far as I'm concerned. This is especially true with the modern brand of malware that will just silently add you to a botnet, rather than do something obvious like trash your machine.
>>155676
I use Bitdefender Total Security 2016
Noscript, self destructing cookies, and common sense 2.0
>>155732
>BIOS itself is dying
This is not true: they just changed the name of it to "UEFI". UEFI is just as much a BIOS as AMI BIOS or Phoenix BIOS.
Pull the UEFI chip out, and your computer's just as useless as any other computer with no BIOS.
(PS if you have a busted BIOS, you can build a BIOS programmer for ~$5 out of a Digispark*, a socket, and a few resistors.
* Which is a microcontroller that plugs into a USB port and costs $1 if you get a Hong Kong clone)
>>155920
UEFI is practically a mini OS (complete with vulnerabilities). It goes way further than your average BIOS, so distinguishing it makes sense. Of course, they're both designed to bootstrap the machine, but "does it have UEFI or BIOS" is a meaningful consumer question.
USB didn't exist back then and I'm not much of a hardware guy, but good to know I could save my board if it ever happens again, I suppose. :-P
>>155927
The PC BIOS has always acted like a mini-OS, it's just that now more of the preboot OS comes out of a flash chip, and less comes off the boot device. Loading a modern OS is hard work, and there's a surprising amount of plumbing in even your average single-OS bootloader.
There's really not a huge difference between UEFI and Grub, NTLDR or BootMGR. BITS (a Grub variant that includes a Python interpreter and TCP/IP stack), especially, is UEFI without the UEFI.
The main difference for consumers, I guess, is Secure Boot. But there's no technical reason Secure Boot needs UEFI, as devices like the Tivo and Xbox demonstrate.
>>155938
The crucial difference between UEFI and boot loaders is that I trust OS manufacturers a lot more with supplying implementations that aren't plagued by the kind of embarrassing vulnerabilities we've recently seen in UEFI. :-P They've had a little more experience with that sort of stuff. UEFI is a big blob of too-advanced-for-its-own-good closed source (usually), and it being "standardized" just increases the attack surface more. No sir, I don't like it.
...but interesting as the discussion is, we're drifting off topic, I guess.
Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware should do the trick. Adblock is also recommended.
>>155684
Comodo is trash, use Nod32 or Kaspersky if going paid.
>>156028
That's not enough. Adblock is shit to the likes of uBlock origin. UBlock origin+umatrix. Malwarebytes seems to have gone to shit which is just truly sad. Recently downloaded AVG free and it found 1 trojan and 2 something else that malwarebytes just didn't. Sad but true. Also, Windows defender is just shit.
>>156534
The reason that i dont download any antivirus is because they are the "virus" itself. I wanted to download Avast but some people say its shit and its a botnet. Also AVG is now own by Avast.
