Questions about Anti-Virus?

What's the difference between free AV and paid AV?

A lot of time AV has to be subscribed monthly or yearly which is not a one-time payment

A lot of time they claim to be free.

What are their usually difference?

On the other hand, when windows system often claims themselves to have “protection”, "firewall"　　 and we should execute windows update from time to time to get the most update security packs.

Aren't those things already a kind of suffficient protection. Why buying Anti-Virus?

I wish to know what kind of things a paid AV will protect us while windows and free AV will never

 

First, please read this article:
Has The Antivirus Industry Gone Mad?!

Secondly, in the past Free AVs were good, the only difference being that with a paid antivirus you get support which usually isn't available or is limited with free versions.

Secondly, Paid Antivirus solutions usually get faster signature updates and may or may not have additional protection features such as but not limited to browser extensions to help protect against malicious websites (which IMO is useless since if you download a virus to your computer or a bad file, the Antivirus File Detection scanner will catch it anyway but the extension may prevent it from getting onto you computer in the first place at the expense of a few false positives and/or a lag in browsing speed)

Finally, at this day and age, it is almost impossible to find a CLEAN free Antivirus with no ads/nags/PUP (potentially unwanted programs) bundled, etc (with the exception of Microsoft's Windows Defender which as improved a lot lately (see:
Windows Defender Is Becoming the Powerful Antivirus That Windows 10 Needs) albeit it is not very light as other paid solutions are on your system.

So if you want the lightest AV solution with proper customer support, no nags, no ads, no potentially unwanted bundled programs, it is best to buy a paid license.

I am using TrustPort Antivirus at the moment which has its own scanning engine in addition to the Bitdefender and AVG scanning engines and it has not HTTP scanning which I prefer as it doesn't slow down my internet. Other great options are Eset's NOD32 and Avira Antivirus and Avast Antivirus Pro

 

I am now only using the free version of Avira AV. Is that good enough

 

yes

 

How about Microsoft Windows Update? What is its difference from AV?

by the way, I am fans of Phoenix Marie

 

This only gives you the latest updates available for your computer's operating system. Nothing to do with AV.

 

To get a full A/V in Windows you need to get MSE or Defender then this will turn on Windows Update and A/V update at the same time. So both will be updated and protected.

If they installed Microsoft MSE or Defener install then it will update the A/V and Windows Updates as well.

 

I have to ask, is the default antivirus you get with Windows 10 (I think it comes with Windows defender which is just MSE) good enough? I had enough of the nagging AVG does these days. Also what is the best alternative for AVG?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Personally, I don't run any AV on my Windows machines. I use AdBlock Plus, Ghostery, and some other script blockers on my browsers and so long as you avoid shady p0rn, warez websites, and weird downloads, you should be fine with just that. Only thing I have beyond that is the free version of Malwarebytes just in case I do something stupid.