Battle Best free antivirus for Android--or no antivirus?

[oldschool]

I use bitdefender free on every family device, but not on my own one

Smart!

 

[ForgottenSeer 77194]

Who do you mean by They?

Android OS does not spy or steal users' data. - Android Open Source Project

"Many games and simple apps"

 

[BeWitched]

Ad blockers are an absolute necessity on phones, if you think you are bombarded by ads on the web, phones are way worse, mainly if you play the so called "free" games... This is a screen shot from my new phone bought back in July just to give an idea...

View attachment 269499

You can change your DNS mobile settings to Adguard DNS. Its a same thing

 

[Razza]

The thing is if you don't install sketchy apps you probably don't need a antivirus, saying that I do have Bitdefender on my family members android devices it more just incase they install crap by mistake plus you web browsering is protected by Bitdefender web protection plus it uses my spare slots up on my Bitdefender family pack 15 devices I got cheap.

Ads blocking wise adguard is good if SSL intercept is on, but DNS level ad blocking is going to getting more and more ineffective as time go on as more and more sites and apps are getting wiser and starting to use the ad domain for non ad content that is needed for it work.

I use adguard at home, I've noticed recently I have to whitelist more and more domains since they are using the domain for tracking/ads for legitimate assets needed for app /website functionality.

 

[Julioporter]

I use bitdefender

 

[eXDj]

huawei have avast and i cant unistall (huawei p20 lite)

 

[Moonhorse]

I installed avg free version to my all family devices, adguard blocks ads inside the application and battery usage is normal even with the antivirus enabled so i dont see any downsides using avg

The main point i use avg is that it blocks malicious pages , gives me somewhat peace of mind

 

[Balrog]

Bitdefender + Adguard on every phone/tablet in house.