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Is Antivirus Software a Waste of Money?

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mouser:
Days after former Firefox developer Robert O'Callahan said that antivirus security suites are not necessary, and AV vendors are of little help. A Google Chrome engineer has echoed the same message, reaffirming that Microsoft's built-in software is indeed the most well-behaved security suite.
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https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/02/01/1334219/google-chrome-engineer-says-windows-defender-the-only-well-behaved-antivirus-cites-tons-of-empirical-data

IainB:
I have updated the Windows Defender (also Microsoft Security Essentials MSE) - Mini-Review with comments and a link to this discussion thread.

As stated in that review:
Conclusions:
Windows Defender aka MSE is an excellent AV tool. Performs as designed, and very well.
There are other AV tools, but to a large extent they would seem to have been eclipsed or made redundant by Defender/MSE, as the latter would now seem to be the de facto anti-virus application and virtually a no-brainer for the majority of PC users.
-IainB (December 04, 2012, 08:02 PM)
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Given the latest turn in events and as per this discussion thread:
In the ongoing discussions, there was a general argument that most AV products could be akin to a scam and in some cases as bad as a virus, with the sole exception of Microsoft's MSE/Defender.

I found this interesting because I had independently - and based on experience - already arrived at this potential conclusion some years back. In particular, for example, the experience of Norton/Symantec AV, as an OEM install, being notoriously cuckoo-like and hostile to other AV software to the extent that it blocks out Defender and puts hooks all over the ruddy registry - so much so that it even needs to have it's own special tool made by Symantec, to completely expunge it from the OS. Hence, "Like a virus."
-IainB (February 01, 2017, 08:24 PM)
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From my perspective, after the experience of using Defender/MSE over the years, supporting several PCs with it installed, and installing Defender/MSE on other people's PCs to replace their existing cruddy/$annoyware AV products, the best things about Defender/MSE seem to be:

* It just works pretty much seamlessly with everything.
* You can install it and forget about it.
* It just gets on with doing its job.
* Very low maintenance.
* One less potentially unproductive technical support issue to have to spend time on or worry about.

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