What is the best free anti virus?

i prefer to use avast premium , i have it complete with cleanup , vpn , tracker password manager ..

OTL AntyVirus, free by Habi **
Links download,
www.habi1994.otl.pl

I use norton for my anti virus and i use malware bytes for spyware, both are pretty good and don't bog down your machine

Tried lots of antiviruses. Recently uninstalled Avast because of negative behaviour on the system. Now ESET.

I think that the person using the computer is the best "anti-virus". Being skeptical about running any piece of software (or navigating to untrusted websites) will go a long way towards protecting against malicious software. In fact, running anti-virus software might make one more susceptible to attacks by providing a false sense of security. It wouldn't surprise me if bugs in anti-virus software are sometimes exploited to gain access to a system.

If I were to run Windows today, I wouldn't install any anti-virus software. Instead, I'd run any potentially malicious software in a virtual machine. You could also create a bootable Windows 10 USB stick, but the risk there is that it would be at least theoretically possible for malicious software to interact with the computer's hard disk(s).

Looking at the list of running processes occasionally could help reveal malicious software, though it wouldn't detect legitimate processes that have been tampered with. Running Wireshark occasionally (with no other running applications) could help determine if there is any software that frequently "phones home", and I suspect it's easy enough to distinguish between Windows' own telemetry and malicious telemetry (though I wouldn't necessarily classify Windows' telemetry as being innocuous).

I'm not sure if people still spend most of their time logged into an "Administrator" account, but that practice was common (including with me) when I used to use Windows, and not a good idea. If there is a Windows tool (like Tripwire for Linux) that can checksum all the required "core" files (e.g., those in the root WINDOWS directory or the equivalent) and confirm that the checksums are correct, that would be useful. The almost constant Windows 10 updates might make this harder to do, however, and like with Tripwire some malicious software might be smart enough to realize that such software is being used.

I would guess that many people click "Yes" to all the User Account Control dialogs that pop-up. The dialog itself doesn't seem to be that detailed ("changes to your PC" is a very vague statement), but one action that can be taken is to look at the publisher's certificate. If the certificate information doesn't look legitimate, that would definitely be a red flag. There might be a way to disable UAC dialogs, but I don't think that's a good idea, even though it's kind of a pain to think about each one that pops up. If you click "No" to a particular dialog, there might be a log file somewhere that contains information about this "denial".

When downloading software, taking the time to confirm that the checksums match and that the certificate information is valid (independently of the UAC dialog) should help protect against the downloading of otherwise legitimate software that has been tampered with.

Mark Russinovich's excellent Sysinternals suite might also be useful for detecting malicious software.

03-10-2017, 04:49 AM

Cipher1573 Wrote: I dont have a loot of knowledge of anti virus, anyone knows a good anti virus for free?

I LOVE kaspersky, try it out

09-03-2019, 03:49 AM

boblone19 Wrote: I LOVE kaspersky, try it out

Been using AVG for years switched to Kaspersky and wouldn't turn back, best one out their in my opinion.

Malwarebytes is really good free or premium, been using it for years now

windows defender is the best. its free and blocks quite alot of virusses and malware

The best free antivirus is the one that comes with windows( Defender). If you use common sense that's all you need.