I think the best free antivirus is built right into Windows 10.
On Windows 7, Microsoft Security Essentials is still getting updated, so that seems to be working well too.

Avast started down the road to the dark side all the way back in 2015, actually. The attraction to make easy money from the gullible among us is simply too great.

We should take a moment to question why we think the approach of “let everything into our computers more or less freely from anywhere on the web, then try to protect the chickens after the fox is inside the hen house”. Maybe we should think a bit harder to keep it out to start with.

Beyond the freeware described, there are freely available (and constantly updated!) blacklists that can be employed in a variety of ways to keep you away from virtually all the sites the host malware, not to mention blocking most of the things that we all find irritating or questionable, with almost no downside. The neat part is that such blocking really doesn’t take any significant resources, and in fact everything gets quite a bit more efficient and effective if your computer isn’t ever dealing with the slop the internet continually tries to shovel onto you. One very good way is to add UBlock (Origin) to your web browser.

I have several systems I have outfitted with blacklisting as primary protection, along with several other mechanisms, that have kept them fully malware-free since personal computing began. Antivirus scans have simply never picked up anything.

UBlock (Origin) is the first and possibly one of the only add-ons you should have for your web browser, and will quite effectively just screen out your computer’s requests to all the sites you really, really shouldn’t let it get data from. Voila, no malware, adware, junkware running on your computer just because you browsed the interwebs.

There are those who might say that all the free content wouldn’t be available if we didn’t allow all the ads and noise. All I say in return is not at the risk of MY data and security! Not even a little bit.

One of the (bad) ways “making money with a website” works is that the webmaster adds code to their site to retrieve ads from some service. The number of folks who view the ads, and especially the number who click through, are counted, and the webmaster is paid. That code runs on YOUR computer!

Here’s the kicker: The webmaster NEVER gets to review that ad programming or content. They make a decision that YOU have to trust THEIR ad provider just as you trust THEM to deliver their content to you. That is very significant, and in practice not a very good idea.

BTW, back to the original subject here: Malwarbytes is also still a great malware scanner in its free form.

-Noel

Ironically, when I clicked on the link for OlderGeeks.com, my browser intercepted it:

Clicking on the “Technical Details” button gave this explanation:

http://www.oldergeeks.com uses an invalid security certificate.

Tried visiting oldergeeks.com on a different browser. This time, the browser didn’t stop me but a different security layer did:

This all happened on my Windows 7 system. However, I was able to go to the website via Pale Moon on a Vista machine (it doesn’t have Heimdal on it) and on a Linux box..

The link for CoreTemp is actually https://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ rather than the https://www.alcpu.co/m/CoreTemp/ you get if you click the link in the article.

Thanks for all the good info!

Norton AV has become more intrusive with popups that advertise Lifelock and nag me to put the computer online so Norton can check that the subscription is current–a classic case of “this is for your benefit, not mine.”

So, would Immunet 7 be a good replacement? The computer is offline most of the time, but I do most of my creative work on it, and has several attached external hard drives with important data.

Also, has Immunet 7’s performance been addressed in one of the periodic rankings of best AV programs?

This post went to moderation I think, for excessive editing:

When you do go online, the very first thing you need to do is update your AV definitions.

It’s worse than that. You need to be online for Immunet to use any scanning capabilities. The database is not stored locally. This is Cloud Antivirus, and it only works while you are connected to the Internet. This is great for new downloads, but will do no good if you want to run an offline scan of existing files.

ClamAV pops up a LOT of false-positives, both in Windows and in Linux. It is often left to the end user to check each file manually. This is like when certain HIPS Firewalls pop up an endless stream of warnings about nothing in particular, with obscure names and file paths.

Immunet is constantly scanning, which will wear out an SSD very fast. It also slows down system performance enormously and puts a strain on heat buildup in the system.

Like all “crowd-sourced” Cloud Antivirus, and most “zero-day detection” heuristics, you will get more stuff you want to download or run, blocked from downloading or running than you will be able to make exceptions. Especially if you run Nirsoft Utilities or Sysinternals or any serious system-level utilities. Even backup software can be interfered with by programs like Immunet.

But if you really, really like Windows Smart Screen Filter turned up full-blast, and if you really, really like the sorts of browser red-circles posted in this thread, and if constant Windows UAC popups don’t bother you, then programs like Immunet are for you.

What really gets me angry is that the development of ClamWin which was a simple interface for ClamAV for Windows, was virtually stopped dead in its tracks when Cisco bought out the ClamAV database and other rights and took this open-source licensed software private, in violation of the GNU Public License. That atrocity alone puts Cisco and Immunet in the same category as CCleaner and Avast. There’s no basis for legal action against Cisco for doing this, but I will never use a pirated piece of open source software, even if it’s free to use.

I am running the latest version of 64 bit WIN10 Pro on a machine with an Intel Core
i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60 Ghz. I was interested in the review of Immunet 7, especially the
idea that it would not interfere with other installed anti-virus software. I
therefore installed it to give it a try. I found that the program did not play
nicely in the background. My experience was that it was a CPU hog grabbing up to
80+% of my CPU and slowing down work I was trying to do. I have therefore
uninstalled it and will continue to rely on good practices and Malwarebytes. Has
anyone else experienced this problem or did I not configure the software properly?

Hi, I started using Immunet based on a your recent Newsletter. Discovered that the ClamAV kept endlessly trying to update and failing. This more than doubled my internet usage until I turned off the ClamAV Engine and its update option. Now I wonder whether the Immunet without ClamAV is doing any good. Thanks for any ideas.