Using free antivirus is the worst thing or gamble you would do with your PC.
Free or paid antivirus?
- Thread starter Henrywrites
- Start date
I rather shutdown my computer than access the internet without having my paid anti virus active.
No antivirus gang reporting in. It might have been useful more than a decade ago but It's just a bunch of fearmongering now by the antivirus companies and the guys at the computer shops get paid to shill out redundant antiviruses for their commissions.
It was useful awhile ago before Windows 8 came built in with Microsoft Security Essentials that became Windows Defender. So the antivirus market is more of a vestige of the days before Windows came preinstalled with one. So these companies just didn’t change their tactics for over a decade, since they always did that.
Unfortunately, you can't really shutdown your computer especially if you have work to do with it. So, antivirus is a must have.
No harm in trying the free version, but using the paid version is better.
There's definitely a harm in using a free antivirus to me. I won't risk it with my system.
I prefer paid antivirus because it sometimes has phone technical support which can be useful when I am not online. It also has features not available on free antivirus.
I'm very sure that those free antivirus softwares would come with ads which is something that I hate very much.
I use paid as I can trust it better to protect me when I need it.
A good paid antivirus software is supposed to be more reliable. Chances of it failing is slim.
I use a paid service as way back in the day someone told me that it is better to go with a paid service as everyone is using the free services and therefore those are the ones people are focused on defeating with viruses. I never looked into how that claim holds up, but I have used the same anti-virus for over a decade now and so far problem free.
They added a VPN service recently and the built-in ads for that were almost as bad as a virus, so that nearly got me to change, but now it is better as they added a toggle to turn off their own malware ads lol. So a sore subject, but I guess that is the current state of software anymore.
They added a VPN service recently and the built-in ads for that were almost as bad as a virus, so that nearly got me to change, but now it is better as they added a toggle to turn off their own malware ads lol. So a sore subject, but I guess that is the current state of software anymore.
Well paid vs free used to be true back in the Windows XP SP1 days, but Microsoft rolled out their own free antivirus, that’s now built into Windows, and that gets really high reviews.
Ya, thankfully Windows Defender has finally improved to a service that is good enough for most. Which is a huge step in security for the masses.
We had AVG, the free one before & I thought it was quite good. We now have McAfee as the subscription came with this newest computer. It seems to be going good.
What other free versions have people tried & do you like them?
What other free versions have people tried & do you like them?
There are definitely great features that comes with paid antivirus. It depends on what you are using the antivirus software for as well.
For me, it's always a misconception that a free antivirus software is going to be very good in doing the job. This is so wrong.
I myself always used to use free antivirus and it would usually be avast but after a while and me having issues when using those anti-virus programs I decided to just use the virus protector built into Windows and I have not had any issues with it all since I started doing that so I stick with that now.
Most of my friends that makes use of that never had any problems with it. Microsoft did well with it.
I agree with you. I make use of it and I am happy I took the decision.