Question Virus Program for Someone that Doesn't Like Virus Programs

[Caveman]

Per subject... I like to run my machine lean and mean with virus programs there only when there's a suspect file to scan from one of my older friend's PC. I don't like bloat and virus programs that are themselves a form of the same. So... what is the most recommended virus program in this community. Seems like Kaspersky and Bit Defender are popular among IT folks on Youtube...
???

 

[bba-tcg]

Windows Defender does a decent job and is part of Windows.

 

[mindless1]

Besides windows defender, I haven't ran an AV in a long time.

If I get a suspicious file, I'll upload to virustotal to scan, and otherwise make full OS partition backups to cover myriad possibilities including nuking malware from orbit, a problematic OS update, hardware failure, etc, etc.

I gave up on 3rd party AV apps the first moment that one tried to prevent me from running something as familiar as a DOS batch file. Really? Wow, no. Batch files aren't just for legacy computing geeks, I use them all the time for batch jobs with python scripts to process video.

 

[balloonshark]

I've been using Malwarebytes because I was able to get a lifetime license which they don't sell any longer. Malwarebytes stays out of the way most of the time.

You could use MS Defender for real-time protection and download the free version of Malwarebytes as a backup/2nd opinion on-demand scanner. Like mindless1 suggested you can upload a file to virustotal for a 2nd or 3rd opinion as long as the file is 650MB or less. Just know that it's very common for some scanners show false positives.

I always download my files and scan them with my real-time scanner and virustotal before running anything.

 

[biostud]

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