Advice Request final opinions please

[electroplate]

hello all . after years of reading and trying av and am combos and standalone solutions i can no longer tell if i'm safe or paranoid !! my need is for lightness with good security .
Lenovo ideacentre 3desktop with
Device name DESKTOP-6ROC5GL
Processor AMD Athlon Silver 3050U with Radeon Graphics 2.30 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (13.9 GB usable)
Edition Windows 11 Home
Version 23H2
Installed on ‎19/‎08/‎2023
OS build 22631.2861
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22681.1000.0.
i have tried these combos

1 cfw/defender with cruels setting and high hardening
2 win fw / defender both with high hardening
3 cfw/eset nod 32 cruels setting and standard est install
4 cfw/malwarebytes premium cruels setting and mbam full install-everything on
5 win fw/defender/ malwarebytes premium high hardening with mbam everything on
6 cfw/webroot cruels setting and webroot on max heuristics.
7 cfw/ cruels setting and nothing else .
i download from yts via torrentbay for movies. other safe surfing of news/politics sites. sometimes google or mainly duckduckgo with Librewolf browser. using next dns . nord vpn occasionally. buy from Amazon/Ebay with Paypal. no pc banking . banking done on android via bank app.

These all seem light enough for me - i edit and cut / subtitle film for educational resources .

what would you pick from these combos please . ihave tried all the other avs etc over the years but these are the ones i work best with .

if you have a burning desire to substitute for another av or no av at all then all opinions for me are useful. i have been infected twice needing reinstall done at pc shop . using internet since XP and all windows since . My god it's amazing what misery we put ourselves through sometimes !!!!! any way thanks for reading this and any / all opinions . cheers and all the new year best wishes.

 

[Brahman]

1 cfw/defender with cruels setting and high hardening

seems a good choice. Oh and remove your product id and device id from your post.

 

[ErzCrz]

1 cfw/defender with cruels setting and high hardening
2 win fw / defender both with high hardening
5 win fw/defender/ malwarebytes premium high hardening with mbam everything on

I'd go with 1, 2 or 5. For info CF doesn't work with a number of VPN solutions as it doesn't add the firewall driver to the VPN adapter.
You can use WFC with Malwarebytes or with just defender or hardening.
Another possibility is VoodooShield/Cyberlock with defender as my planned configuration this year.

Simplicity is the key really but given you use torrent, it's worth adding the hardening or whitelisting like CF or VS/CL or the addition of MBAM.

 

[Moonhorse]

Since you dont do banking on your computer at all , only risks are malicious content that could come from torrenting if im correct about what you said

I would instead pay for content unlock like netflix etc ( i only catch the ones we have in finland in my head)

Anyways i would myself use configure defender on high settings and comodo firewall with cruelsister settings of the above configs

 

[brambedkar59]

1 cfw/defender with cruels setting and high hardening
2 win fw / defender both with high hardening
3 cfw/eset nod 32 cruels setting and standard est install
4 cfw/malwarebytes premium cruels setting and mbam full install-everything on
5 win fw/defender/ malwarebytes premium high hardening with mbam everything on
6 cfw/webroot cruels setting and webroot on max heuristics.
7 cfw/ cruels setting and nothing else .

i have been infected twice needing reinstall done at pc shop .

If you are getting infected with those combos you mentioned, then I have some bad news. These combos don't make you bullet proof if you are a happy clicker, you need to change your browsing habits. System hardening or Default-deny solutions won't help you as you know how to override them, and when you do it often it becomes muscle memory.

i download from yts via torrentbay for movies.

I won't say don't pirate because that would be hypocritical of me. So just stick to websites on Megathread on r/piracy for downloading movies (And stay away from cracked programs/games). Also disable "hide extensions for known file types" if you haven't already done so and always check the file extensions for media files.

My advise: Keep it simple, just pick one AV whichever you like, one adblocker (uBO or Adguard), Use NextDNS (or QuadDNS) to block malicious websites. Most importantly change your browsing/clicking habits and have a wonderful new year.

Edit: Forgot to choose the combo form the list. I don't like either of them personally but if you would put a gun to my head and ask me to choose one then I would pick either 2 or 3.

 

[cruelsister]

i have been infected twice

If it was on a CF protected system, that would be both surprising and unacceptable. The most probable way something like that could occur is to override a containment popup for some file that you attempt to run (never wisdom unless one is absoDamnlutely sure it is benign).

So to circumvent such an issue, my suggestion is to use CF at my settings AND put CF in Silent Mode. It is also best practice to flush Containment daily and at the same time peek into anything that C has put into the Unrecognized category.

For supplementary protection if you can handle WD by all means keep it active. For a secondary weekly 2nd opinion scanner go with KVRT- but as K updates that product every few days therefore requiring another download and deletion of the outdated version, if this would be a pain NPE could also be used (any of the other popular 2nd opinion thingies tend to be oblivious to either active Scriptor infections and/or their Persistence mechanisms so are not recommended).

Any further tweaking would not be needed. Hope this helps!

m

 

[simmerskool]

For supplementary protection if you can handle WD by all means keep it active. For a secondary weekly 2nd opinion scanner go with KVRT-

current sidenote re kvrt, current AV on my system is DeepInstinct. User cannot pause Di from desktop client (too lazy to go to its cloud portal), and I ran kvrt the other day and included scan of the system c:\ssd and +6 hours kvrt was still scanning with 0 detections and 2.7M objects scanned. The progress bar was barely at 10%. But just scanning with the first 3 default settings (memory, startup objects, & boot sectors) "only" took +7m36s. Then I set kvrt to scan just c:\ overnight and at +8h18m it had inspected 4.2M objects with a long way to go. I stopped the kvrt scans. I assume DeepInstinct was slowing it down... NPE scan is pretty quick here, 3 to 4 min tops.

 

[Duotone]

hello all . after years of reading and trying av and am combos and standalone solutions i can no longer tell if i'm safe or paranoid !! my need is for lightness with good security .
Lenovo ideacentre 3desktop with
Device name DESKTOP-6ROC5GL
Processor AMD Athlon Silver 3050U with Radeon Graphics 2.30 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (13.9 GB usable)
Edition Windows 11 Home
Version 23H2
Installed on ‎19/‎08/‎2023
OS build 22631.2861
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22681.1000.0.
i have tried these combos

1 cfw/defender with cruels setting and high hardening
2 win fw / defender both with high hardening
3 cfw/eset nod 32 cruels setting and standard est install
4 cfw/malwarebytes premium cruels setting and mbam full install-everything on
5 win fw/defender/ malwarebytes premium high hardening with mbam everything on
6 cfw/webroot cruels setting and webroot on max heuristics.
7 cfw/ cruels setting and nothing else .
i download from yts via torrentbay for movies. other safe surfing of news/politics sites. sometimes google or mainly duckduckgo with Librewolf browser. using next dns . nord vpn occasionally. buy from Amazon/Ebay with Paypal. no pc banking . banking done on android via bank app.

These all seem light enough for me - i edit and cut / subtitle film for educational resources .

what would you pick from these combos please . ihave tried all the other avs etc over the years but these are the ones i work best with .

if you have a burning desire to substitute for another av or no av at all then all opinions for me are useful. i have been infected twice needing reinstall done at pc shop . using internet since XP and all windows since . My god it's amazing what misery we put ourselves through sometimes !!!!! any way thanks for reading this and any / all opinions . cheers and all the new year best wishes.

1) cfw/defender with cruels setting and high hardening: If you don't install software often, and only used legit ones then this combo would suffice, in addition with a good adblocker & dns.
But like you mentioned you do Torrents and stuff then:3, 4, and 6 w/ CF cruels setting and standard est install.

As an example, why a decent AV is still needed. I installed a VPN before, it passed CL as a safe file, checked virus total only 2 AV flagged it (AVAST/AVG) as PUP. Continued installation after which KSF warned me of the VPN as a LEGITIMATE software but may compromise my data, in the end uninstalled the VPN.