But like I said ik you be bashing on WinDef, but like I already said it's way better than it used to be, and back at the beginning of 2020 was rated by several places among the 3 best free antivirus software out there

Fair

I have mixed feelings about antivirus software; I don't personally use it, too jaded from when they were big a decade ago in the times of NOD32. Those things were such monstrous resource hogs and really stifled productivity with active scanning on new files you wanted to work with

But at the same time when I see how older people or less techinical people use the pc and the shit they download and click on

I always recommend them getting an antivirus

Yeah. That's why I didn't bother installing any other ones, though I do have osarmor, which is very good imo

Think I heard a few years ago the founder of McAfee now considers McAfee itself pretty much malware/spyware

Although I think I also heard people saying he went kinda crazy

Lol

I also consider it malware <:ROFLMAO:451759517579870219>

i dont use any anti virus, i just avoid shady sites and only use reputable ones/downloads

Yeah. There's some times that I need to though so I like to have one

Just run whatever shady shit you need in a VM

call it a day

XD

I don’t use any anti viruses I’m pretty good at avoiding viruses

Does anyone know a good smaller mechanical keyboard that I can order for around 100

I'd strongly recommend you not disable the built in anti virus that comes with most modern OS's. Modern anti virus is a lot more then anti virus. It also protects you from malware which does not require user intervention to even get and some will protect you from zero day exploits with machine learning techniques. Anti virus also often gets signatures to protect you from new exploits in your software or OS while you wait for official patches to the software.

There are a few reasons to disable anti virus completely but they are outlier cases. Modern anti virus is fairly light on resources and had gotten a lot more intuitive about not running at the worst times.

Ehh

There have been plenty of times I've seen "Antimalware Service Executable" shoot to the top of Task Manager

"not disable the built in anti virus that comes with most modern OS's" correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows is really the only one that implements a (half-assed) anti-virus

Mac OS has general security warning for unknown publisher applications and Linux I know essentially has nothing built in

RE zero day exploits; this is really not that common IMO. I develop FDA medical devices (part 11 CFR and 510K) that run a custom embedded linux OS and the last exploit we patch for is dirty COW. I'm 100% certain there have been dozens of new exploits found and even publicly documented but I have seen 0 issues. As part of FDA submission we also get our products professionally pen tested by at least 3 different vendors and none of them have ever come back and said hey we were able to gain root privelege via exploit

My computer came with McCafe, it itself may as well be a virus. Has pop ups you can’t close for ex amount of time begging you to buy it, blue windows popups “your antivirus expired” etc

McAfee and Norton are the two biggest ones I know of that come pre-installed on Windows by the manufacturer and they both love popping up with "PLEASE BUY OUR SOFTWARE". I wouldn't be surprised if they used some shady practices like "32 Potential Problems found! Please upgrade to full protection to ensure your safety!!"

Not very much unlike the fake system scan scam ads

I will probably remove McAfee from my PC sooner or later since it’s not actually doing anything

*do it*

_do it_

Aight ty

Zero day exploits happen all the time. You just have to look at the ransomware attacks from a few years ago and see multiple of those used previously unknown zero-day exploits. One of them used an SMB exploit to spread through company networks to people like you who think that just because they use good practices they are secure. There was also another one that used another zero-day exploit that was previously only known to the NSA before it got leaked and then used to spread the ransomware. For non Windows examples, Linux had a exploit a few years ago where somebody found an exploit in SSH to be able to get into non-updated servers through the SSH. There was also just a few months ago a root escalation zero day attack exploit found in Linux.

According to Apple's own website, Macs include antivirus by default.

The half asses anti virus is really the sentiment of older versions of Windows defender, they actually make the one in Windows 10 fairly good. I use Linux without WINE (the main way to get user environment viruses/malware) but I help friends and family all the time. In general I tell them to trust the built in anti virus based on the virus scan reports I've read from recuable security companies unless they have a particular reason like my grandfather who clicks on almost anything and gets so many risky emails or my Aunt who had access to sensitive healthcare data for her job when working at home on her personal computer.

What he meant I think was that windows is the *only* one to put an av on out of the box. The emphasis was on `only`, not on `barely good` (paraphrasing)

I think

Basically windows is the only one who does it, and the one they have is barely good. I don't agree with barely good, but I think that's what he meant.
Ig you said other do have it though

@Stargatemaster96 out of curiosity what 3rd party free av would you consider one of the best?

That's precisely what I'm saying with Linux. There are all these available exploits, unknown and known, and more and more being discovered often; yet you don't see any antivirus implemented by default. That's probably because security policies and safe practices will trump any av system. Re Mac; I have a Mac and if they have a built in av it's fairly silent and light but I'm not so sure there is one and by that I mean one that does background scanning or active scanning malicious software

Less of a replacement for built in anti virus but to complement I used to use Malwarebytes free.

They have one line on their site hinting at one but go on to explain that it's mainly safe due to the system architecture and not some named active piece of software