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the one and only legit FREE antivirus for WINDOWS
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Hmmm, Comodo have turned up in the news for all the wrong reasons for too often, which shows they either don't learn from their mistakes or just don't care.
We are used to hearing of AV having a vulnerability or two, but rare we see terms like "...contains a swathe of severe vulnerabilities..." as happened a few months ago (now fixed...hopefully).
https://www.zdnet.com/article/comodo-antivirus-subject-to-serious-unpatched-vulnerabilities/Their lax attitude to certificate chain of trust is also why nearly all malware now has a valid certificate.
Personally I feel they should have had the same treatment dished out to Symantec when they were stripped of the trust to issue certs by all the browsers, but for some reason they are allowed to continue. -
@Dr-Flay from the same article:
Updated: Updates to resolve the security flaws are expected to land on Monday.i get that there can be a lot of competition and warfare between all the products and that everyone can be subject to discredit someone else but pointing out mistakes can also lead to solve them. that said i don't aim to credit this antivirus as the best of the best and being flawless, from my experience im just saying that if i didn't find this antivirus i would stick to Windows Defender and nothing else (i'm on windows) because other products are so much freaking bullshit with fake protections or loaded with ads or whatever else privacy breakers you could think of. so what is the point of having an antivirus that does the spyware job right from the inside?
i don't care about a flaw or two when that can get fixed with updates.as for now my comodo addon is substituting windows defender.
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@iAN-CooG I also have not used any Antivirus apart from Windows Defender and Firewall for years. My long experience of solving problems on forums indicates that many are caused by antivirus sending vital files to quarantine, so I recommend not using such products.
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@Pesala said in the one and only legit free antivirus. if you ever need one (all of them are trojans):
I also have not used any Antivirus apart from Windows Defender
That IS an antivirus, so you can't say you aren't using any
many are caused by antivirus sending vital files to quarantine
AV companies got a bit lazier in last years, they tend to include everything they don't know as "potential" or "suspect" but if you use the report forms on their site for reporting bad/false detections they usually generate better signatures to avoid the false alarms. I always found both Avast and Kaspersky being very quick to adjust their signatures when reported.
Last week I reported 4 false alarms to Kaspersky, they promptly replied in few minutes their mistake and a couple of hours later the signatures were updated.
Not reporting bugs and just surrendering is not useful to anyone.http://iancoog.altervista.org/
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Windows10 64bits - 8core i9-9900K @ 3.60GHz - 16Gb RAM - nVidia GT1030 -
@iAN-CooG said in the one and only legit free antivirus. if you ever need one (all of them are trojans):
@Pesala said in the one and only legit free antivirus. if you ever need one (all of them are trojans):
I also have not used any Antivirus apart from Windows Defender
That IS an antivirus, so you can't say you aren't using any
That is why he said "apart from Win Defender", which is also an excellent AV today and shure the best of the free ones.
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@iAN-CooG yes, it is by default on windows and free. in fact this is another antivirus solution, didn't think about it because it is default with windows updates.
this is also the lightest solution for malware protection and could easily go with just this!
comodo for when you need more functionalities, it has all you need. -
@urfausto said in the one and only legit free antivirus. if you ever need one (all of them are trojans):
@iAN-CooG
comodo for when you need more functionalities, it has all you need.Windows Defender also, in addition it is not recommended to use 2 AV at the same time, since when analyzing the same sensitive sites of the system, they can conflict. It is enough that one has a false positive and the other not to lose important files permanently or that one identifies the other as malware.
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TL; DR:
If you think Windows Defender isn't good enough, you clearly care enough about your security for it to be worth paying for a decent AV from a reputable company.
Just my £0.02...: I have used Comodo on and off for a while and there are some things I like about it and some I absolutely hate. I love the fact that you can still make it ask the user what to do instead of only allowing auto-quarantine like many AV solutions today. I also like the fact that it works on file scanning and behaviour blocking, so it doesn't need to sniff your internet traffic (some AVs do this but implement the feature so poorly it actually lowers your security by breaking HTTPS validation). What I don't like about Comodo is some of their lax security practices that have made the news over the years, and the unnecessary bundled cruft in the installer (PrivDog, GeekBuddy, Yahoo homepage/search-hijacking etc). Yes, it can all be disabled, but it tarnishes their image somewhat. I know every free AV provider's doing it these days, but it still doesn't make it the right thing to do. I also don't like their absolutely abysmal detection-rate, high level of false-positives, and the sheer weight of the solution. It takes up masses of RAM, hard disk space, and absolutely eats my CPU, whether it's an 8 year-old Atom, or recent dual overclocked hex-core i7-8700Ks. I also find its interference breaks a lot of other software, even when you allow it in Comodo's interface, and sometimes it makes Windows a bit more unstable than it already is. It's also an extremely noisy solution, unless you tell it to automate absolutely everything, in which case I suspect a lot of the protection is lost. Unless you're a very technical person with no money, you can do better.
Windows defender has its upsides for your computer-illiterate Gran who just wants to send an e-mail to her friends at computer class. It's built-in to the OS, is extremely simple, and its detection rate at present is great. It should also be the most stable solution as it is part of the OS itself. However, because of this, it will be the first solution to be targeted for disabling/evasion by new viruses. Its detection rate is also inconsistent, and it is rather simple, meaning that it relies more on detection and really simple behaviour rules than more sophisticated products would. It also leads to a lot of problems because it has nearly as many false positives as Comodo, and its Ransomware protection blocks lots of legitimate programs from doing what they're supposed to, including most software-installers, Libreoffice and even Microsoft's own xcopy! That said, if you're not willing to fork out for a decent AV, and you insist on using free, you may as well just use Windows Defender.
If you think Windows Defender is insufficient for your needs, you should really care enough about your security to either use an OS that isn't targeted by as many viruses, and/or pay some money for a lightweight, effective AV solution from a trusted company with a good track record, such as F-Secure, Emsisoft, et al. £29 per year to protect a number of your devices with the base-level of protection from one of these providers is a lot cheaper than identity-theft or ransomware-payments from using a second-rate AV (or the data-harvesting crud with backdoors and unpatched-vulnerabilities, that gets bundled with its installer).
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@jamesbeardmore yes you are right too, this is however about FREE stuff because you don't the money to afford it and windows mainly. linux i think is good even without any antivirus, but i don't know for sure.
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@GraveDigger said in the one and only legit FREE antivirus for WINDOWS:
to those claiming they're not using security software on windows, onlt a complete **** doesn't.
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The best antivirus with an irresponsible user does not work, it is the same as a car with the most modern security systems with a blind driver.Windows Defender is an AV that is not worse than any other that can be installed. But this does not take away from using the common sense of the user or who thinks that by having an armored system with the best AV can do anything on the network, enter any page or download from any source.This is valid for any OS, not only for Windows, but also for Linux and Mac, which have also relied heavily on their laurels and therefore have much less security software at it's disposal than Windows, precisely because it has always been the most attacked.
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why do we need a 2nd thread about a generic recommendation when there's already a better thread one line below? https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/40223/recommendations-for-anti-virus-to-replace-avast-premier?page=1
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@npro because this is a specific answer to a general matter and current state of the art. why you must even point out...
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@urfausto said in the one and only legit FREE antivirus for WINDOWS:
@jamesbeardmore yes you are right too, this is however about FREE stuff because you don't the money to afford it and windows mainly. linux i think is good even without any antivirus, but i don't know for sure.
Yes I appreciate it's about free stuff, I guess I'm just trying to point out that most free options aren't any better than Windows Defender - so if you want better I'd argue that there in fact isn't a free option, only paid.
Regarding GNU/Linux, it's not going to suit everyone, but you are partially correct regarding AV for it. It's got a stronger track-record for security, for one reason or another. Most internet servers run GNU/Linux (or did at one time), yet most viruses have always targeted Windows. Historically that was because GNU/Linux systems were naturally more securely designed. Nowadays, I think Microsoft has upped their game, so the advantage is possibly more one of security through obscurity these days: Most desktop machines run Windows, so very few viruses have ever targeted GNU/Linux on the desktop as there are too few users for the viruses to be able to spread effectively.
An additional problem to virus propagation is a side-effect of the problems you often get when trying to install software on GNU/Linux systems from outside that system's repositories. Many viruses try to exploit old, unpatched systems. Let's imagine a virus compiled against the libraries for, say, Ubuntu Breezy Badger, which is rather elderly. That virus might work against a couple of Ubuntu versions from around that time, perhaps Hoary Hedgehog or Dapper Drake, but it'd probably fail to run on, for instance, the contemporary version of Fedora (probably Fedora 2 or 3 at the time), or indeed on modern versions of Ubuntu.
As a slightly controversial side-note, relating to operating-system choice, I could also suggest that if you don't have the money for antivirus software, you could save even more money by not buying a licence for Microsoft Windows. For a newbie you couldn't go too far wrong with Linux Mint, despite their one historic security-gaff.
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@jamesbeardmore what about windows 7 dropping updates and support? it's the only decent windows release. will u be protected with an av in the future?
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@urfausto said in the one and only legit FREE antivirus for WINDOWS:
@jamesbeardmore what about windows 7 dropping updates and support? it's the only decent windows release. will u be protected with an av in the future?
Windows 7 is a good OS, but Windows 10 is at least as good or even better for security. The difference is that it requires that certain functions that are set on question the privacy against Microsoft. But using, for example, the O&O Shutup10 (a small and free app, standalone) it is done easily with a few clicks, then having a fast, light and private OS with a Defender that is up to any other AV.
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@urfausto Depends on what you want. AV can't catch non-patched security holes, only infected files/malware, and in my eyes security holes are more important than having or not an Antivirus.
Practically I can't think that Microsoft won't patch severe vulnerabilities, there's still just too many Windows 7 users that won't downgrade* to Windows 10 and they did it for XP as well.
Personally, I already switched to Linux in one machine of mine that used to be on W7 and my other machine that had W10 preinstalled is on the roadmap for some time later. I just got sick of playing cat and mouse with Microsoft and their filthy tactics, https://www.ghacks.net/2019/07/11/did-microsoft-just-drop-the-telemetry-bomb-on-windows-7-users-without-telling-anyone/ and *Windows 10 is a serious privacy offender. Running O&O or any other software won't save you, you have to block dozens of servers in your host file etc. and pay attention all the time for more privacy breaches and never know if you did enough. Not for me anymore, enough is enough. -
i would never switch to windows 10 because i don't like the app system (smartfon like environment) at all, that's why i think it has serious privacy problems. and i am too lazy for linux actually.
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@npro how new security holes would happen without new features and implementations if the OS has been patched and updated all along for a long time?
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@urfausto Security patches for Windows 7 are still being released every month how haven't you noticed that? Hackers look for holes everywhere and all the time, they won't stop, on the contrary they will be even more motivated. The latest Spectre and Meltdown CPU vulnerability that was affecting all CPUs is another great example how flaws existed for 20 years and some researchers discovered them only last year...
