My McAfee subscription has expired. Is there a good free anti-virus programme or should I just re-subscribe to McAfee?
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I'm not a fan of McAfee. In a corporate environment, they were slow to add new threats. And their system was a power hog and was buggy. And we were paying them lots of money. I'm not convinced that the home version would be any better.You get what you pay for.
I'd not go for a free version, unless it was on a bit of kit I did not mind losing.
McAfee is good (there are others) get the family version which covers 3 devices.
It then means if you replace you current computer with a new one, you can have both old and new covered whilst both are still in use.
It also means the 'two' in 'two of us' gets covered as well.
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This from Which?, describing BitDefender Free:My McAfee subscription has expired. Is there a good free anti-virus programme or should I just re-subscribe to McAfee?
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I used to until I wanted to get rid of it. Impossible to remove.+1 for AVG - used it for years on loads of devices with no issues
Not neccesary in my opinion. I had McAfee on my laptop when new and ran it for 1 year but didn't renew. The laptop I kept for 6 years and used it on some dodgy sites (not that kind of dodgy!! Just downloading TV shows from via bit torrent) and never had any issues.
Microsoft (Windows) Defender, built into your system (I'm assuming you have a windows PC) is enough and doesn't get the recognition it deserves as a anti virus protector. Many sites say it is as good as McAfee.
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Actually McAfee annoy me - they are the worst 'virus' in my opinion. Since I unistalled their software I constantly get spam messages popping up telling me I am in danger and unprotected. (Which I am not!)
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Windows defender is not a real AV solution.
It's written by the same folk who program Windows which is full of holes and insecurities
Even they admit it's not a real AV solution.
Windows defender is not a real AV solution.
It's written by the same folk who program Windows which is full of holes and insecurities
Even they admit it's not a real AV solution.
I worked for McAfee for years. It's great, but let down by the muppets who provide the front end to it.
I still use it coz I know how clever the folk there are.
AVG free is the only free one I'd use.
I used to test the top 10 products every week against a million viruses and send reports to the bosses.
Independent testing. Hmm.Independent testing disagrees. Defender does a pretty good job. The multinational I'm currently working for uses Defender for Linux on all their on-prem cloud infrastructure.
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knowinglyThe other thing to consider... I've not had a virus for about 15 years. My current virus scanner could be doing absolutely nothing, I'd never know.
But most of those attacks aren't viruses or worms. They are insecure software exploits, or people being tricked into running software. So an anti-virus might not even be able to tell you that you've been compromised. AV is not a complete shield.knowingly
Its the other vectors, like dodgy emails/phishing/fake logon sites etc. I see/block 100s of these daily, and many are "zero day" ones, that get through now, but in an hour are blocked. Rather annoying.
User training/testing is much more important. but sadly many are too important/stupid/busy to listen/get trained. One customer lost c. £20k through fake emails. Nothing secure/insecure about them, simply someone emailed pretending to be CEO and got the finance guy to pay some fake invoiced urgently. Then asked me to help lol. The emails would not get blocked by any scanner, as they were genuine emails just had changed display name. The accounts guy even said he thought it was weird, wasn't written in the same tone or addressed to his usual abbreviated name, and thought the email address (gmail) was new. But did it anyway as he was busy....
Most "hacks" aren't hacks, its people stupidly giving out their passwords to something by choice and without thought. But its easier to blame a "hack" than admit being fooled.
Totally correct.But most of those attacks aren't viruses or worms. They are insecure software exploits, or people being tricked into running software. So an anti-virus might not even be able to tell you that you've been compromised. AV is not a complete shield.
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