The Anti-Virus Tier List

I recently visited a customer with a "slow laptop". They had AVG, Avast, Norton and McAfee all installed at the same time! How that thing ever booted up is beyond me.

The best line “if your computer gets infected every time, there is a problem between the chair and the keyboard”. That is priceless. 😂

I've been a pirate for more than a decade and ESET has never failed to protect me from dangerous sites.

I received a free ESET license from work, and it seems to be good so far, but the assisted learning mode sure causes a lot of popups. We use it in our office and it killed an attempted ransomware attack that had brute forced a domain admin password dead in its tracks, so I definitely rate it highly.

Glad to see other people calling out Norton and McAfee for the dumpster fires they are. It's insane how many people still don't realize just how bad those programs have gotten.

Removing Norton and McAfee completely without a trace from your computer tends to be harder than getting rid of some of the most troublesome viruses

I remember hearing a news story years ago about Kaspersky unearthing a highly secretive government intelligence operation because it's detection was soo thorough

As IT enthusiast for ~20 years (not working in business for 15 - now only fixing PCs / laptops for people on the side occasionally) - I completely agree with this list and all the tips and insights provided. Really great worth recommending video for people who maybe don't know much about this stuff. Funny how this popped up as suggestion on the side of watching astrophysics video :) Also internet with current OS versions is relatively safe space if you don't register and visit fishy websites and don't open attachments from unknown emails. The biggest risks for modern day user are data breaches and leaks on all the service websites hundreds of millions are using - like multiple google breaches, all sorts of social network data breeches, etc, where they leak your passwords and other data. Hell even leaking email address is bad thing because you land on spam lists which are also used by malware senders, scammers, and what not. And all this danger is not on client side nor out of his fault.

I can vouch the McAfee one. I once worked at a hospital that had them loaded everywhere and it turned i7 6th gen laptops to Celeron Ds.

Honestly, the info on why not to trust influencers who get kickbacks is more critical than the tier list.

hard to believe that ive used nothing but Kaspersky since 2007. I still remember when it was version 7. Part of the reason was because I managed to buy a tonne of leftover stock from a store that was going out of business and found a load of them still chilling at the back of the warehouse that had totally been forgotten. One of the greatest things about Kaspersky is keys from older versions will still activate for newer versions. There was a few years where they wouldnt allow this to happen but i think they rolled it back.

Thanks for the great video! I have one suggestion: if I understood correctly that your latest experience with the F-Secure one is from 2016, I'd recommend you give it another go in 2024 :) The detection rate (and the whole package) has developed quite a bit.

Having worked in tech support, the words "the problem is between the chair and the keyboard" rang so true. Some people just don't know what they're doing and blindly click on anything. I have a hard time dealing with parents and in-laws who constantly find themselves with issues.

You forgot the most important security software: ad blockers Honestly, I only use AdBlock on Arch Linux and stay away from downloading suspicious files

ive been using avast for a little bit (free version, im a bum) and i noticed where you put it in this list i know absolutely nothing about this field so just a few questions and observations: 1) for me avast tends to redirect me away from "infected" websites more often than windows defender, just wondering, in terms of pure avoidance of bad sites and dodgy installs (ignoring annoyance of use, data leaks, etc) how does it compare to defender? 2) is it worth just getting rid of it and relying on defender, is it going to be more or less as effective?

Im using Bitdefender Total Security on my workstation is that enough for me?

Working tech support back in the day, I distinctly remember commenting on how the Norton Suite trial would essentially start behaving like malware as soon as the trial period was over. Computers would display all the typical symptoms of being infected to the point that they seemed near unusable. Then, they would magically come back to life as soon as you uninstalled it. Really, the only worthwhile piece of software from Norton is their removal tool.

As a user of ESET for the last 8 years, having him nudge between A and S tier back and forth is a win for me

Does this apply only for windows or for other OSs too?

Thank you for your honesty, I'm usually very skeptical of this kind of videos but you seem kinda trust worthy, maybe because you made it easy for me heheh. Lately I've been cleaning my computer of crappy software that came with it and I wanted to know if I should install some antivirus for protection, but if the windows default one does its job so good, no need for extra protection I guess.