For me, I’m very happy with the ESET suite of products. I’ve never been a victim of Malware or any other virus. While free is nice and Windows Defender works well enough, I’m very glad o take the extra protection I  very happy with ESET.

From: Brian Vogel <britechguy@...>
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 1:27 PM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Re: Antivirus software.

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 02:26 PM, Dan Longmore wrote:

Windows Defender is a strong anti virus program and while paid ones may have stronger points

Dan, what follows is not a criticism of what you've said, which is 100% accurate, but an addition.  Any other product, paid or free (at least potentially), may do better than Windows Security does with a given thing.  That's shown time and again in formal tests where each and every major security suite product changes position, often from the last test to the current one, because one of the things tested that's given more weight than others improves in one product while staying the same in others.

This is one reason why any statement that product X is better than product Y, without any qualifications, and regardless of the product, is nothing more than an opinion.  You need to be able to identify what it is that's better, and why, between X and Y across all significant dimensions, how you weight those, and that product X is better across a majority of them before you can declare it better with any objectivity.

I can, and have, given my subjective opinions about what I like best, but that does not make it "best for all users and situations."  I generally try to describe what my criteria were.

So, I'll repeat myself, as I've posted this before.  But the closest thing you (any you) are going to find that are at least somewhat objective measures of the effectiveness of a given security suite across multiple dimensions/functions is to look at the reports from testing labs, and not just the latest one, but going back at least a year, preferably two, to see how the various products have changed places over time, and how the different testers weight things differently such that one declares suite X superior to suite Y while another says just the opposite, but both place them in the top tier of products.  There are no simple declarations with regard to security software.

See the most recent plus the last several years of historical test results from:

AV Test

AV Comparatives

SE Labs  (Reports Page)

MRG Effitas  (360 Protection Testing Category)

This article from Quietman7, a security expert at BleepingComputer.com, makes for interesting reading, too, and directly pertains to the sorts of testing referenced above:  Reflections on Antivirus/Antimalware Testing & Comparisons

 
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Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 1909, Build 18363  

The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it.
       ~ Lawrence Krauss