It’s easier to win a test race than to run fast every day. Regardless of how wonderful MS’s built in solutions are claimed to be these days, in my experience they slow usage more than any other option tried. Freebies collect a lot of data, nag and spam you suites are redundant to existing protections.
I’d definitely avoid free AV’s and Internet Suites. Based on your comments, you don’t seem high risk. If you’ve never tested your online habits by going for a period of time with MSE disabled without infection, you may want to continue using an AV, your choice. No need for extensions, browser, AV to all be blocking malware and constantly updating pick one, they use similar databases.ĪV’s are certainly an industry so you won’t see, say, security forums disrecommend them, just lots of inconclusive arguing about which is best. As noted by others, there are multiple layers of protection existing beyond AV’s: modem (ISP), router, switches, device firewall, hosts file (if loaded), browser, third party blockers, etc.ĭisable redundant protections where possible. I personally haven’t seen convincing data on whether or not AV’s are needed. Those who learn about vehicle and traffic dynamics are far better and safer drivers than those who drive solely to reach a destination. For those individuals, some kind of protection is a good idea for the savvy who have a history of no infiltrations, maybe not. I’d bet most users have little feel for good online practices, they just want to surf the web. Thanks again to everyone, it was very helpful and reassuring.ĭepends entirely on how you use your device. If I’m right (?) then not allowing MSE to use these definitions is just an act of bullying, which creates an unneeded security hole on the internet. I do currently plan to simply keep MSE running after January 14th, hoping that any potential threat is intercepted by the existing definitions.Ī last note - I do personally believe that MSE uses security definitions that are also employed by other MS antimalware products (i.e. (Btw, most security updates target pretty absurd and rare scenarios.) The issue with Office/PDF documents, however, should not be ignored. Nothing in the registry, autostart, fishy processes, unplanned online activity, loss of internet speed, dubiously high CPU activity etc., and of course no ransomware. If it’s compromised, then MSE has failed to detect the threat in all fast/complete scans I have ever performed and there is also no indication that there’s any kind of malware on the system. While I do not recommend to do that, I have to point out that my completely unpatched 7 SP1 system has, to my knowledge, not caught anything in all these years since 2011. I do indeed use uBlock Origin and uMatrix, as well as a number of other extensions. Thank you to everyone who has replied so far.