Battle Looking for free, light, good protection antivirus

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topstuff

New Member
Thread author
Jun 27, 2019
4
Hi,

Been with Avast free for a while, but getting sick of all the telemetry. My needs for antivirus are:
Free
Must be as lightweight as possible on system
As privacy friendly as possible
Good protection for web/email - Not a heavy happy clicker
Non cloud-only protection (if possible)
Locally configurable

I have ruled out:
MS Defender (too heavy)
Russian/Chinese solutions (some might argue it is silly, but there remains question marks here,). This one isn't 100% against, but prefer not to include them unless there is a good argument.
Bitdefender free - was too heavy and barebones for me.
Avira - was too heavy with it's launcher and other stuff
 

Andrew3000

Level 11
Verified
Top Poster
Malware Hunter
Well-known
Feb 8, 2016
516
Free: Kaspersky Free Antivirus (Yes, it’s Russian but don’t worry that you won’t have Putin in your PC) or Tencent PC Manager (Cinese). I know you don’t want Russian or Chinese products, but these two are good, light and mostly free.
Paid: Eset.
 
Jun 26, 2019
75
Free: Kaspersky Free Antivirus (Yes, it’s Russian but don’t worry that you won’t have Putin in your PC) or Tencent PC Manager (Cinese). I know you don’t want Russian or Chinese products, but these two are good, light and mostly free.
Paid: Eset.
He or she literally stated that they did not want recommendations for Russian or Chinese software and you've only gone and given him or her exactly that? How is that going to help them?

You may as well throw your requirements out the window if you're unwilling to spend money on security software because anything that does fit your criteria is likely going to turn you into an investment... the same way Avast did.

If you're willing to spend money, upgrade to a paid model from Avast and disable the data collection under privacy settings. Then it won't be so bad at all.

If you're not willing to spend any money, you may as well settle for Windows Defender if it works on your environment. You won't get Anti-Spam.
 

Andrew3000

Level 11
Verified
Top Poster
Malware Hunter
Well-known
Feb 8, 2016
516
He or she literally stated that they did not want recommendations for Russian or Chinese software and you've only gone and given him or her exactly that? How is that going to help them?

He want an light, free and good av. Tell me a decent av that’s free. If you exclude Kaspersky, Avira, avast/avg, Bitdefender, windows defender, tencent pc manager. What remains? Almost nothing that is simple to use. Would remain Comodo which is not light and causes problems on some systems.
 
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LDogg

Level 33
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
May 4, 2018
2,261
Your option(s): Comodo Cloud AV, Adaware Free (complete junk), Amiti Antivirus & Forticlient.

These above (excluding Adaware & Amiti) with your criteria which would be the most logical to have a look, my two suggestions would be to have a look at either CCAV or Forticlient as solid options with your recommendations in mind.

Edit: do not touch Amiti with a barge pole.

~LDogg
 

topstuff

New Member
Thread author
Jun 27, 2019
4
If you're willing to spend money, upgrade to a paid model from Avast and disable the data collection under privacy settings. Then it won't be so bad at all.

I tried paid Avast with all data collection options off. They still sent some data to known collection points. This is the reason i'm moving, if they can't even stop that on paid products, what trust is left?
Google "avast pi-hole" for a way to block hosts via a pi-hole or even a locked down hosts file to see which addresses can be blocked and still have active virus protection.

I will try CCAV, Forticlient, Immunet. Thanks guys.
 

gery79

Level 12
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Jun 21, 2011
566
comodo cloud is lightning fast and very light. not so crazy superb but decent and Tencent 360 is the better choice if you don't mind it being Chinese.AVG is basically avast brand but it does a better job i think . It is light .Panda is not my cup of tea .
KASPERSKY is the another very good choice
 

davisd

Level 3
Verified
Well-known
Jan 27, 2019
107
Well, I could provide you a 210 day trial (no different than paid) license for the Eset Internet Security which you would be able to add/manage from your account at my.eset.com. There are also F-Secure SAFE 6 month 3 device promos going around, you might want to check that out, since recently changing from Bitdefender to Avira engine, it has become much lighter on system impact, but choice is yours. I cannot think of a good free AV based on your criteria/needs.
 
Last edited:

Ink

Administrator
Verified
Staff Member
Well-known
Jan 8, 2011
22,361
You don't ask for much, do you?
Good protection for web/email - Not a heavy happy clicker
Non cloud-only protection (if possible)
  • Use a browser extension such as Malwarebytes, Emsisoft or Microsoft for Chrome/Firefox, alongside your AdBlocker. Or use uBlock Origin for a stricter web experience.
  • Cloud is advised for "faster & better" protection, but you must agree to the terms of use.
 

oldschool

Level 81
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 29, 2018
7,044
Sophos,
Unless and until your are an analyst who executes a 1 hr old ransom, these are stringent enough!.
Pair it with anti. Exe / Voodoo shield/ NV armour.

I failed to mention Sophos as an option with VS. Good web filter. Make sure you select the free version and not the free trial of premium because the latter has a lot more processes. I still think CCAV is your best option for your requirements, especially set up as @amico81 advises.
 

monkeylove

Level 10
Verified
Well-known
Mar 9, 2014
489
What I did was install each free program and see what it was like. I was using the free version of Bitdefender until a few months ago, when it began to slow down the boot time. So, I tried the ff.

Windows Defender (built-in)
Kaspersky (there were two types)
Comodo (I think there were two)
Panda
Sophos
Avira
AVG
Avast
Bitdefender

and used Kaspersky Security Cloud for a month. I noticed that file browsing slowed down, so I tried Bitdefender again and found out that the boot time problem disappeared.

Finally, I also had to download any uninstall cleaner for each one to make sure that nothing was left after uninstalling.
 

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