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Unintrusive Antivirus?

D

desura

Diamond Member
So I've tried Avast, AVG, Panda, and Avira. All of them have this annoying tendency to barrage me with popups and change my search engine to yahoo.

Are there any good unintrusive antivirus programs out there? I'm also not willing to pay more than $20.
 
Yea...I feel you. Everything that was good has become bloated and overbearing. The Malware suites are getting to be the same way. I'd be curious what others recommendations are.
 
Uhm, why not go without an AV? No-one says you have to have one. Practice safe computing, possibly use Parental Controls to whitelist known-good executables, and then block everything else. This prevents downloading a malware .exe in a temp directory and executing it. Use firefox with NoScript and AdBlock to prevent other in-browser hi-jacking and malware.

I find AV software to just bloat and slow down the system, quite frankly. (Although with a fast dual-core or better, some of the recent (2009-2012) Norton IS programs weren't horribly bad.

I do install MalwareBytes free, and run a scan every week. But that's the extent that I go to. It doesn't stay resident in memory, sucking up resources, when I don't want it to.
 
Immunet is light, and fairly hassle free...

http://www.immunet.com/plus/index.html

It's not the greatest av, but I'd say it's a bit better than mse. It uses cloud definitions, and optionally can use clam definitions offline. I don't remember any install shenanigans, but that can change at any time, so just pay attention when installing to prevent search engine change, and other nonsense.
 
Sadboxie and Bitdefender free is what I use. Bitdefender Free is cloud based as well.

If you want to take it up a notch run an Untagle server which uses Clamwin and a HIPS firewall.

If you use Sandboxie you should configure it to store bookmarks, access your profile (at the risk of lower security.) and clear data on browser exit. Read there forums or just ask here if you need help if you use Sandboxie. The reason why I suggest Sandboxie is did an anti-virus software stop cryptolocker?

You still need resident malware protection. This is due to USB drives and such. You should turn auto play off.

The scanners I use are Malwarebytes, Herdprotect, ADwcleaner, TDsskiller, SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition and Rkill. I do have Spybot search and destroy, but I just updated to their newest version and it produces a crap load of false positives when you scan and I had trouble updating its database. So not sure I can recommend that.
 
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I use Avast and the only popup I get is when a new version is available or when the definitions are updated. Those are configurable so mine show for 1 second each.

If you're getting something else or a change in the home page you're doing something wrong. With any application, just clicking quickly through the installer is a bad idea. Stop and read each page and use the custom option if available.
 
Mike64 said:
With AVG Free, you can turn off pretty much all the notifications under "Options -> Notifications".
Click to expand...
This option does not exist in my version of AVG free. You can, however, delete the folders for the nag addons. They stay deleted until the next "major" update, but this seems to happen every week or two.
 
Binky said:
This option does not exist in my version of AVG free. You can, however, delete the folders for the nag addons. They stay deleted until the next "major" update, but this seems to happen every week or two.
Click to expand...
Huh. Fwiw, the new copy I recently re-installed is version 2015.0.5315. As for the nags, I only downloaded this copy about a week ago, but so far so good, using the delete-the-folders trick...
 
John Connor said:
Pretty good at not giving a damn either. LOL

http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerab...ntials-loses-av-certification/d/d-id/1107614?
Click to expand...

Who cares? AV is optional. It's a backstop. A last-ditch defense when the primary lines of defense fail. People who expect AV to act as the front-line and who expect it to do oodles of wonderful things are 1) deluding themselves 2) practicing bad security and 3) opening themselves to loads of false positives.

I'd consider MSE being shunned by the snake-oil AV establishment to be a badge of honor.
 
code65536 said:
Who cares? AV is optional. It's a backstop. A last-ditch defense when the primary lines of defense fail. People who expect AV to act as the front-line and who expect it to do oodles of wonderful things are 1) deluding themselves 2) practicing bad security and 3) opening themselves to loads of false positives.

I'd consider MSE being shunned by the snake-oil AV establishment to be a badge of honor.
Click to expand...


I already mentioned Sandboxie. And if your malware protection is week and you have something that MSE won't give two craps about on a USB stick then you are infected.
 
Windows Defender or Microsoft Security Essentials.
A list of programs from 10$ to 30$ with some scores is here:
pcmag.com/products/1594?Price=[10%20TO%2030]
 
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desura said:
So I've tried Avast, AVG, Panda, and Avira. All of them have this annoying tendency to barrage me with popups and change my search engine to yahoo.

Are there any good unintrusive antivirus programs out there? I'm also not willing to pay more than $20.
Click to expand...

Nod32 and it will cost you more than $20.
 
VirtualLarry said:
Uhm, why not go without an AV? No-one says you have to have one. Practice safe computing, possibly use Parental Controls to whitelist known-good executables, and then block everything else. This prevents downloading a malware .exe in a temp directory and executing it. Use firefox with NoScript and AdBlock to prevent other in-browser hi-jacking and malware.

I find AV software to just bloat and slow down the system, quite frankly. (Although with a fast dual-core or better, some of the recent (2009-2012) Norton IS programs weren't horribly bad.

I do install MalwareBytes free, and run a scan every week. But that's the extent that I go to. It doesn't stay resident in memory, sucking up resources, when I don't want it to.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Besides the [probably] untrustworthy MSE I have under W7, it is a rare instance that something happens. And since I maintain a 90-day backup cloned drive the world seems safe for now.

Of course, if I wish to browse certain websites that are inclined to have malicious content then I simply boot into a separate drive with Linux Mint on it.
 
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