One of the questions people ask me the most, and in fact a friend just asked me a couple of days ago is about this topic. What virus protection software or service do I recommend?
I decided it was time to make a forum post that I could reference.
Most of the options I do not recommend, and in fact recommend against. Partly because of the cost with no real benefit. Partly because they often slow down your computer and block things they shouldn’t. Partly because sometimes they create more privacy and security problems than they solve either through shady practices or incompetence.
So my primary confident recommendation is to use Windows own antivirus and firewall. I have instructions here on how to do that.
The next one I would consider is Safing Portmaster. I have had it installed for many months now and haven’t had any problems. I haven’t used it and explored it enough to officially add it to my list of recommendations for everyone, but it’s on my todo list, and I hope one day I can enthusiastically endorse it. It is an outbound firewall, and here’s my podcast episode on why I recommend an outbound firewall for everyone.
The final one I would consider is PC Matic. I haven’t used it myself yet, or even installed it, so once again, I can’t confidently recommend it to everyone, but I like it’s approach. It uses an application whitelisting approach to stop malware. I am a huge fan of this strategy. You can read more about it here or listen to my podcast episode about it as well.
This is something I will continue to research and update as time goes on, and I hope to get feedback from people who try them out, so stay tuned for more updates.