I’ve had Malwarebytes for years on my personal windows pc and it’s up for renewal. Is Defender sufficient or something else cheaper but better? My default is to cancel.
Use ClamAV
And also windows defender. Both are free (as in beer) and effective enough if you aren’t just running any random crap you get from the internet.
Defender is free and if you get something it can’t mitigate then you’re better off wiping anyways.
interestingly, this is likely the most truthful and practical statement I have read today.
Defender is fine.
My SO is still on Windows, so I just have Malwarebytes installed to run a periodic (free) scan, and run Defender for active protection. We’ve been doing that pretty much ever since Defender became a thing and haven’t had any issues.
As others said, if there’s an issue Defender didn’t detect, investigate, and if it’s actual malware, reinstall. That’ll cover you 99% of the time, and the other 1% (rootkits) of the time isn’t worth protecting against for the average person.
Cancel. The paid plans are mostly for business customers or the additional features. Even if you like their product, the core antivirus is the same for free tiers as it is for paid.
As for Windows Defender, it is perfectly fine for the majority of people. It is no longer the hot pile of garbage it once was. If it was me, I’d just switch to WD.
You’ll be fine with Defender. If you want some extra on-demand scanning of specific files, you can just use the free version of malwarebytes (if that still exists).
