Battle FREE AV for absolutely clueless users? NO YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION

[Evjl's Rain]

hello, I would like to pick an AV for other people when they ask me to install an AV

I love avast free but the problem is avast does not automatically renew its license or users are most likely to ignore all messages to confirm license subscription

what I want are
- FREE AV for complete noobs, who can only open the browser, word, excel and refuse to learn everything else
- no yearly subscription system, or it can renew automatically without user's interaction
- Relatively good signatures
- as light as possible
- Good proactive features
- If the proactive features are not the best, it should be able to pair with other security tools
- no Chinese AV, please. Too many nags and traps
- I don't care about privacy thingy. I just need it to work. In my country, privacy is close to 0 and almost nobody cares. Online banking is not a frequent activity
- works on windows 7

My initial options
- Bitdefender free: not the lightest but good enough
- panda free: the lightest but it's panda
- Kaspersky free??? it has a 356-day subscription but not sure it would renew automatically
- AVG free: the last time I saw it didnt have subscription like avast free

against:
- sophos free
- Qihoo 360
- Tencend
- Mcafee
- (avast)
- MSE

 

[Deleted Member 3a5v73x]

I usually recommend to stay away from McAfee, but McAfee Cloud AV might be a worth looking into McAfee® Cloud AV

 

[Kuttz]

Bitdefender Free consumes RAM a bit too high but performance impact on system is low provided the PC had at least 4GB RAM or above. I run it on my crappy laptop which had an Intel i3 5005U, 4GB RAM just fine. The other option is Forticlient which is even faster than BD Free but lacks the Behavior blocker.

 

[Sr. Normal 2.0]

ZoneAlarm AV

Pros:

• It´s free, doesn't bother unless it's for something important.
• Very easy to use and it is for many (me among them) who think it is the best free firewall.
• It is not as heavy as in other editions
• Has philosophy to install and forget.
• Uses Kaspersky (delayed) engine.

Cons:

• Lacks AntiRansomware defense
• Ugly, ugly, ugly ... but easy

An advanced user will want more settings, but for a novice, it's really comfortable, but is not a friend of the Emule, while with software like Qbittorrent it has no problems.

 

[ForgottenSeer 65219]

Panda performs buggy each and every time I test it.
Sophos Home is Heavier than OS itself :/
I Think for ease of use :
MSE is best ( even you against it )
Otherwise, Go For Bitdefender Free.

Best Regards.

 

[upnorth]

immunet?

Immunet AntiVirus

 

[Rengar]

I think AVG and BitDefender are the correct options here

 

[Rengar]

immunet?

Immunet AntiVirus

Immunet is good with another strong av, its not good alone.

 

[ForgottenSeer 67480]

AVG is nonsense because when i tried test him, he eated me 80% RAM without knowledge and system gets too much problems with performance and stability, there was uninstallation problems too. I think the best choice will be Avira. What about Avira: Sometimes can have problems with services and functions with stability. My cons: Too much RAM Eating and still a little bit unstable just like Avira was still in BETA version.

 

[Thirio]

Bitdefender free - good overall protection, set and forget, no settings to deal with
FortiClient free - good file and web signatures, exploit protection, light, no registration
VoodooShield free (Autopilot mode) - set and forget, simple yet effective, automatic

 

[Vasudev]

Personally using WD, MBAM Free and ZAM Free w/o any issues.
Guess what WD detected on my PC.

 

[Bleak]

If as stated the user only does browsing and office software, and since every AV is listed here, personally I'd just depend on browser security since it will be the only way the system can be infected, so uBlock Origin with defaults filters + malware domains and maybe MVPS hosts.. and on top of that you may add a public DNS with good filtering like Norton ConnectSafe, that should be enough to protect the system from careless browsing.

I'm assuming that since the user is newbie, they won't be looking to download programs.

 

[Evjl's Rain]

Bitdefender free - good overall protection, set and forget, no settings to deal with
FortiClient free - good file and web signatures, exploit protection, light, no registration
VoodooShield free (Autopilot mode) - set and forget, simple yet effective, automatic

VS is out because even in autopilot, it still generates a lot of prompts during my 1 year of testing. Not friendly enough for novice users

Personally using WD, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free and ZAM Free w/o any issues.
Guess what WD detected on my PC.View attachment 179397

9/10 of them are using windows 7 with 1-4Gb of RAM so no WD. I don't think MSE is good and light enough

If as stated the user only does browsing and office software, and since every AV is listed here, personally I'd just depend on browser security since it will be the only way the system can be infected, so uBlock Origin with defaults filters + malware domains and maybe MVPS hosts.. and on top of that you may add a public DNS with good filtering like Norton ConnectSafe, that should be enough to protect the system from careless browsing.

I'm assuming that since the user is newbie, they won't be looking to download programs.

I have many more layers such as ublock with hphosts+many malware filters, avira browser safety, appcheck antiransomware, unchecky but an AV is still a must because they also get files from USBs and I saw avast blocking several threats in its logs

malwares can bypass webshield and uBO filters easily

 

[509322]

hello, I would like to pick an AV for other people when they ask me to install an AV

I love avast free but the problem is avast does not automatically renew its license or users are most likely to ignore all messages to confirm license subscription

what I want are
- FREE AV for complete noobs, who can only open the browser, word, excel and refuse to learn everything else
- no yearly subscription system, or it can renew automatically without user's interaction
- Relatively good signatures
- as light as possible
- Good proactive features
- If the proactive features are not the best, it should be able to pair with other security tools
- no Chinese AV, please. Too many nags and traps
- I don't care about privacy thingy. I just need it to work. In my country, privacy is close to 0 and almost nobody cares. Online banking is not a frequent activity
- works on windows 7

My initial options
- Bitdefender free: not the lightest but good enough
- panda free: the lightest but it's panda
- Kaspersky free??? it has a 356-day subscription but not sure it would renew automatically
- AVG free: the last time I saw it didnt have subscription like avast free

against:
- sophos free
- Qihoo 360
- Tencend
- Mcafee
- (avast)
- MSE

Here is the problem when absolutely clueless people ask for an AV or security soft:

1. hardware (CPU)
2. physical memory (available RAM)
3. operating system
4. the state of the system; crapware and whatever else is on the system
5. unexpected behaviors of security software
6. then all the issues that others on this thread mention - as well as all the security forums across the web

Absolutely clueless = cannot handle anything other than install, some minor tweaking, perhaps moderate tweaking with a good guide or person-to-person assistance, and uninstall

In the end, the best solution is going to be one with high detection, low false positives, few issues with PUPs and auto-quarantine, very few GUI bugs, easy to figure out in case a file needs to be restored, and few features to confuse the user.

I can tell you that Windows Defender with Exploit Guard is not for the absolutely clueless user. The Windows Defender GUI is buggy and an absolutely clueless person is never going to be able to handle Exploit Guard and to tweak Windows security without a lot of assistance and hand-holding.

If you can spend 1 hour with a person, and they can grasp things, then you can put any of a number of softs on their system. But if you don't have that in-person session, then it is better to stick to the above formula.

Absolutely clueless people should use Chromebook.

 

[DeepWeb]

Like others have said, my first priority is to get them to install uBlock Origin and configure it properly in every browser.
Once they have done that I just install Avast free. It has caused the least trouble so far and has an amazing behavior blocker.

 

[509322]

hello, I would like to pick an AV for other people when they ask me to install an AV

I love avast free but the problem is avast does not automatically renew its license or users are most likely to ignore all messages to confirm license subscription

what I want are
- FREE AV for complete noobs, who can only open the browser, word, excel and refuse to learn everything else
- no yearly subscription system, or it can renew automatically without user's interaction
- Relatively good signatures
- as light as possible
- Good proactive features
- If the proactive features are not the best, it should be able to pair with other security tools
- no Chinese AV, please. Too many nags and traps
- I don't care about privacy thingy. I just need it to work. In my country, privacy is close to 0 and almost nobody cares. Online banking is not a frequent activity
- works on windows 7

My initial options
- Bitdefender free: not the lightest but good enough
- panda free: the lightest but it's panda
- Kaspersky free??? it has a 356-day subscription but not sure it would renew automatically
- AVG free: the last time I saw it didnt have subscription like avast free

against:
- sophos free
- Qihoo 360
- Tencend
- Mcafee
- (avast)
- MSE

Teach (or point them) people how to setup Guest Account. This is more valuable than installing a freeware security soft. If you can get a single user to always use a Guest Account, then you have done your job.

There is no easy answer and even with clueless people it comes down to what works best for the individual. Most people will have an easier time figuring out Avira Free than they will Bitdefender Free because most people will understand what they can see (Avira Free, old school scanner) more much than what they cannot (Bitdefender Free, hidden automated).

New users seem to like McAfee and Avira.

So perhaps make a list, give them a list, then let them decide by looking at the pictures. What else can you do past a certain point ? You can only do so much. As always, it is the user's choice, even an absolutely clueless user's.

 

[Syafiq]

Hmmm... my first option would be Avast Free, then Kaspersky Free

 

[Hector1]

Kaspersky free for me (light, good definition and good web shield, but I don't know for the license after one year).

 

[Sunshine-boy]

Kaspersky free is good enough for a guy who is lazy to learn security tools. but you need to tweak it and share your config with them.I think it will renew but not sure. @harlan4096 you tell us.

 

[browneylad]

This is my kind of thread since I'm pretty novice . My choices would be one of Kaspersky free or Avira free suite. Possibly adding a 2nd free layer like MBAM is advisable. I first used Zemana & IObit (later upgraded to Emsi). Avira free suite has all the tools now & I have seen it being quite popular during my Uni days as free av.

Will there be a poll on top later based on popular choices?