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And now I have to correct my interpretation of Defender's status in this test, because I previously speculated that So this is not a perfect answer, to be sure, but certainly not something that should be totally neglected.
BEST FREE ANTIVIRUS 2018 WINDOWS INSTALL
That’s why it’s a good idea to do a preinstallĬleanup of any previously installed AV apps before you install a new one. And that means that an app that performs well on a pristine test machine might not do nearly as well on your PC. That’s been in use for a while, all of those extraneous variables will come right back into play. The downside is that in order to answer the question honestly, we have to eliminate all of the extraneous variables that might prejudice the result in the testing environment – and once you install an AV app on a machine
This test operationalizes this fundamentalĭefinition with a testing procedure, and that procedure provides a set of protection scores that can be used to rank AV apps – which in turn provides us with an evidence-based answer to our question:
BEST FREE ANTIVIRUS 2018 WINDOWS PC
Of course the way out of this self-imposed impasse is simply to evaluate AV apps by ranking them in terms of their performance on specific criteria, which is exactly what all of the independent AV testing labs actually do.īut it’s also important to define the essential criterion for AV apps, which is their ability to prevent a PC from being compromised, and this is the starting point of the AV-Comparatives Real-World Protection test. Now logic dictates that AV apps can’t all be the best, but it certainly doesn’t rule out the possibility that there’s a best AV app – and we really can’t throw out the questionīased on the fact that different criteria can be applied as the basis for the evaluation, so as far as I’m concerned, this is a non sequitur. – which sure sounds like an evasion of the question rather than an answer for it.
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… testing labs follow the best industry practices, so users have some valuable sources for security software tests and reviews without having to rely on “recommendations” of sales staff, marketing departments or opinions of unknown “advisors” onĪnd on the other hand, we have quietman7 - MVP pointing out that AV apps are all different, and that they can be evaluated on the basis of different criteria, with the conclusion that “ there is no single best anti-virus” So if you’re not using this industry standard evaluation methodology on a regular basis, then you’re simply not qualified to answer this question: They have to acquire non-sequential data by simultaneously exposing all of the current versions of the AV apps to a large set of malware samples that’s highly representative of the current threat landscape – and that this has to be done in a carefully controlledĮnvironment. So in order to be relevant, c omparative evaluations of AV apps need to be based on the same scientific methodology that applies generally in the field of product testing and evaluation, and that means that That’s because personal experiences with malware tend to be very limited for careful users, and because personal experiences with AV apps are always sequential in nature and consequentially only allow for comparisons between old and new versions – because anybody who’s offering you advice based on their own personal experience just doesn’t have enough information to make a valid comparison. It really doesn’t matter who says what on this topic So most people naturallyĪssume that all they have to do is just decide who to believe based on the experience, level of technical expertise, and impartiality of the person making the recommendation – and that’s simply not true. The first observation that we need to make here is that there are as many different answers to this question as there are free antivirus apps, and that by the accepted laws of logic, they can’t all be the best.