Which Antivirus Software?
Choosing an antivirus product for your computer is one of those things that sounds simple until you actually start to try to do it. Then suddenly you've got a bunch of browser tabs open, you've read six "Top 10 Antivirus" blogs, and you're somehow more confused than when you started. Sound like you?
We've been fixing computers and removing viruses and malware, right here in Christchurch since 1997. So, we've seen pretty much every type of virus, their tricks and methods and how many different antivirus products have fared again them. We know what works, what doesn't, and what's just marketing noise. Here's our advice from over 100+ years of combined experience.
They're All Pretty Similar, Honestly
Here's something the antivirus industry (big AV? 😉 ) doesn't really want you to know: the main products are more similar than they are different. Norton, McAfee, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, ESET, Trend Micro, Malwarebytes and the rest of them are all going to protect you from the vast majority of threats out there. They all update their definitions (the thing that identifies a virus) regularly, they all scan in real time for threats to your computer, and they all catch most viruses and malware before it causes a problem on your computer or laptop etc.
Independent labs like AV-TEST and AV-Comparatives test these products constantly, and the results supposedly show that the top products genuinely are all about the same in terms of protection. We're talking about 98 to 99.9 percent detection rates across the board. The differences, when they exist, are usually pretty marginal.
So, if you read a blog tells you that one product is dramatically better than another at actually detecting and removing viruses, take that with a big grain of salt. The marketing would have you think there's a massive gap between the "premium" product and everything else. In reality, the gap is often tiny. Its just marketing bluster.
The big differences is in stuff like how much the software slows your computer down, how annoying the interface is, and what irks me most, how aggressively the company tries to sell you more stuff once you're already a paying customer. Read on to learn about that…
The Fear Marketing Problem
Now this is the part that really annoys us and honestly is not doing these companies any favours, and we've been seeing it get worse over the years.
A lot of antivirus companies seem to spend more money on advertising and marketing than they do on actually improving their product. And the method of marketing they use tells you everything you need to know about the crappy underhanded tactics in use.
And the tactic is almost entirely built on fear.
They shout “Your computer is under attack. Hackers are watching you right now. Your personal details are at risk. Buy our protection before it's too late.”
There is a kernel of truth here… to a point. These threats are real. But here's where it gets a bit rich. Once you've actually bought their product, the fear marketing doesn't stop. In fact, it often ramps up even more. You log in and get warned about your "identity has been exposed." You're told you don’t have VPN and someone could be snooping on your internet traffic. You're offered a "dark web scan" showing your email has appeared in some data breach. Then comes the upsell, pay more for the full suite, add identity protection, add a password manager, add this, add that – it all sounds like the crypto scammers who plague computers around the world.
At some point you've got to ask: who else is running a fear campaign on computers right now? Because it genuinely starts to feel a lot like what a scammer would do. Create anxiety, offer the solution, take your money. Push hard, don’t wait, act now. Don’t think. The irony is pretty thick.
We're not saying these additional features are always a waste. Some of them are genuinely handy. But the way they're pushed on computer users, often through scary pop-ups and inflated warnings designed to make you feel like you're moments away from disaster, is dishonest. And we don't like it.
Good security software should make you feel safe, not constantly anxious.
What Good Antivirus Actually Looks Like
Here's our view after years of working with these products on real customers' computers.
QUIET
Good antivirus does its job quietly. It runs in the background, it checks files as they come in, it updates itself, and when it finds something bad it tells you clearly and deals with it. That's the whole job. It doesn't need to be loud and dramatic about it.
SPEED
It shouldn't slow your computer to a crawl. Some antivirus products are genuinely terrible for system performance and we've seen computers that ran noticeably better after we removed the security software. That's not a good look.
NAGGING
It shouldn't nag you constantly. If you've paid for a product and it's up to date and running, you should be able to get on with your day without endless notifications reminding you to upgrade, renew early, enable extra features, or check your "security score." Your house locks don’t nag you all day saying how they have managed to stay locked.
EARNT LOYALTY
And it shouldn't use scare tactics to keep you onboard. A good product earns your loyalty by doing the job well, not by making you feel like you're perpetually one minute away from having your bank account emptied or your device exposed.
So What Should You Actually Get?
For most home users in New Zealand, you honestly don't need to spend a fortune. Windows Defender, the antivirus that comes built into Windows 10 and 11, has improved dramatically over the past few years and is now genuinely competitive with paid products. It's quiet, it's reasonably lightweight, and it doesn't try to sell you anything. For a lot of people, it's perfectly fine.
If you want a paid product, Malwarebytes is the Anti-virus that we think does the job well, gets on with it quietly, and isn’t overly pushy. It’s light on system resources (CPU & RAM etc) than some of the bigger names, and it won’t yell at you with an up sell.
What we'd generally steer people away from is the bloated all-in-one suites from companies that seem more interested in your money than your security. If an antivirus product has a "security score" dashboard that's always showing something as amber or red no matter what you do, and the fix always involves paying more money, that tells you something about the company's philosophy – and it’s not to help.
The Bottom Line
Antivirus software is genuinely worth having. Threats are real and no one wants to deal with a virus or ransomware on their laptop or computer. But the choice of which product to use is less dramatic than the industry wants you to think, and the ongoing fear campaigns that some of these companies run on their own paying customers are, in our view, not okay.
Pick something reputable, keep it updated, don't click on things you're not sure about, and don't let any anti-virus company pressure you into buying more than you need.
And if you ever do end up with something nasty on your computer despite all of that, we’re here to help. We've been sorting viruses out since 1997.