Virus Protection

What is the best free antivirus program in your opinion and do I really need one?

Thanks

I would say yes that you need one. Mine blocked 3 just last week. Now, as far as the best free I cant comment on that. My ISP is Comcast and they provide Norton Security Suite for free to its internet subscribers.

AVG free is about the the best free in my opinion, thats not to say that its great though. They all suck, so its just choosing the best out of a bad bunch. And yeah, you should have one.

I use AVG Free.  I haven't had any problems with it and its very light on resources.

I normally would write a tome about this based on past bad experiences with free AV but I will try to keep it short and sweet. I have had a number of PC's get infected by using free AV and I would consider myself a fairly safe user. It is a really good idea to fork over a little bit for a paid service since you get better protection in my opinion. I get Norton 360 because it has excellent protection and features.

eBay is the place to go if or when you get a paid security suite. Notice that I said security suite and not AV. I hate having half a dozen different programs that all have to be run separately to accomplish the same bottom line. There is other important protection to get such as a firewall and some of the nice suites even have things such as identity vaults and social networking protection(I can't speak for this since I hate social networking BS). I pay $20 a year for N360 while getting it from their main site would cost $60(it's on sale sight now), normally $90. This is way too much in my opinion.

The other one that I have used that is good is Trend Micro Maximum Security. You can buy it now for $9 on eBay for a full year for 3 users and I believe it even works on Android and Mac, and you even get 5GB of online backup. That is one hell of a deal if you ask me.

Another really good idea is to stop using IE if you are right now and switch to Firefox. I made the jump about 6 months ago and can't believe that I didn't do it earlier. You also get a lot more security with FF. I would recommend HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript and AdBlock(this doesn't do so much for security but sites and YouTube video load much faster since you don't have to deal with a million ads). Run all of this and unless you are completely reckless, you should have nothing to worry about.

I am hoping Logan will read this when he does the next Inbox.exe video, since I hate people spending asinine amounts of money when they don't need to. Shop around and find what works best for you and what does well in malware blocking tests.

AVG is, in itself, a virus. It hogs system resources (killer for most store bought consumer computers) spam you with useless warning and is clunky. 

The same goes for Norton, McAfee, etc. The only antivirus software I completely recommend, free or otherwise, is Microsoft Security Essentials. It's a great antivirus software and it pretty mimimal. Also get Malware Antibytes, it'll detect malicious objects that MSE won't (malware, spyware etc.)

Avira free has a nice detection rate. I'm not sure about its use of system resources, though.

Common sense.

Honestly though. I have no virus protection on my laptop and I havn't had a single issue for close to a year and a half.

I also uninstall any and every program i don't need.

Viruses come fromthe internet and Potentially some malicious ads and trackers. I use adblock, https everywhere, collusion for chrome and ghostery to block trackers and for encryption.

Currently the best ranked one is Avast Free. http://www.avast.com/index

Anti-viruses are useless. If you want to be secure, learn to be secure without them. Nothing beats common sense. 

You can start with using limited user account, protecting your browser and reading comments before downloading anything potentially harmful. 

In my experience with anti-virus software, I've found Bit Defender Total Security 2010 to be the best for me. The 'free' ones are bloated and resource-costly so I've never used them. Their code isn't as optimised as it should be. If the paid versions are sluggish as the free ones are, get rid of them immediately.

Just switch to Linux, it will save you a lot of  headaches.

Normally I don't "flame bait" but this is such a bullshit comment. Norton before 2007 was absolutley terrible, I would not have even touched it. But since, it is one of the lightest and fastest suites out there. I get the impression that you are talking shit about something that you have not even used or you would know what I am talking about. The only time Norton ever bugs me is within several weeks of license expiration. Everything it does, it does quietly without interrupting me.

I can also tell you from personal experience that MSE is a pretty shit program even for being free. It has some of the slowest fucking scans times I have ever had of any AV and its blocking and clean up leaves a lot to be desired. Never go off the review of a single person who says "lol this pr0gram is s0 g00d it blocks everything bad." Take time to read reviews from places that actually take the different AV's through testing. Here is a quote from PCMag about MSE:

"Microsoft Security Essentials detected 63 percent of the threats, lower than any product tested with the current or previous set of malware samples. It left behind executable files for more than half of those it did detect, and several of them were still running after their alleged removal. Its overall score of 4.3 points for malware cleanup is the lowest of any current product."

That was a completely rational and well thought out post full of respectable language and mannerisms.

I work on computers and repair their problems daily as a side job along with my regular full time work, often times working longer and making more money doing them. Before I started my "buisiness" I did my personal research and tested AVG, McAfee, Norton, MSE and some other one that I cannot think of the name at the moment, and not only was MSE extremely quick (and still is) it also found  roughly the same amount as AVG and Norton (+/- 2) but completed the scans in a quicker pace.

Additionally when you typically work on lower end systems, you'll find that all the "major" AV producers utilize an extreme amount of resources for their products. One case being that Norton was using 800mb of memory on a system that had 1gig available, bringing the computer to it's knees and slowing it to a snails crawl, after removal and installation of MSE the computer ran perfectly fine (prior to the addition of making other changes.)

MSE in it's early stages was indeed horrible, so there is validity in what PCMag stated, it purely depends on when the article was written.

Also: "Never go off the review of a single person who says "lol this pr0gram is s0 g00d it blocks everything bad.""

Convenient you wrote this.  If you have an opinion your damned entitled to such but going on a rant and rave because someone doesn't agree with your choice of a free product is idiotic.

don't be a dumb ass on the intenternet and don't let your dumbass friends use your computer unless under direct supervision like on a large TV screen in the living room

I use Avast in conjunction with Malwarebytes.  It works great, and it's light-weight.  I just looked in Task Manager, and it's only using about 5MB of memory.  Thus far, it is my favorite free antivirus.  MSE took forever to run a scan, and I haven't messed with AVG's newer stuff since I had to manually remove it from a machine running XP.  It wouldn't uninstall when I tried to remove it from the control panel; it kept giving me an error saying it was already removed.

I also don't recommend the "Oh, I'm too smart to get a virus" route.  I tried that, and it didn't work out too well.  I mean, I felt pretty confident.  I didn't open emails from people I didn't know.  I didn't download from websites that I didn't trust.  As a matter of fact, I always downloaded from official and well-known websites.  I have used Firefox and Chrome since I discovered 'em back in 2008-2009.  I also kept Windows up-to-date and made sure the Firewall was always on.  Guess what...I noticed my computer had started slowing down, so I decided to run a scan with Malwarebytes.  My computer had somehow contracted AIDS, gonorrhea, and about 50+ other STDs.  I told her to stay away from them dirty floppies.

TL;DR

Use Google, do some research, get an antivirus.