suzyne wrote: ↑2025-01-09, 19:41
BenFenner wrote: ↑2025-01-09, 12:41
Yeah, competent Windows users never had to deal with those horrible pieces of software either.
I believe this to be true, I have never installed additional antivirus protection on my Windows computers...
Is "additional" the right word though? 3rd-party antivirus is meant to replace (i.e. turn off) Microsoft's built-in one. And Microsoft themselves once upon a time bought an antivirus from another company ("Giant") and shoved it into Windows.
Over the years, Microsoft took over, renamed and updated it. It remains a subpar solution with performance issues and questionable protection. Yes, almost no sensible user "gets infected" today. It's mostly about Web Protection these days and web browsers, along with ad/content blockers are doing a great job on their own.
From having recently used Microsoft's Defender, I distinctively remember constantly adding exclusions for many of my programs, thus reducing protection (via a joke of a UI btw), because Defender kept spiking HDD and CPU usage every time a non-mainstream program was doing its thing.
I consider Microsoft's Defender one of those built-in crap software. It's just hidden more elegantly since "it's part of the OS". But it truly remains horrible and I'd rather use a fully customisable, easy to use, advanced alternative from a reputable company. There are still a few ones that stealing your data is not their main goal.
And I'm not even sure if technically it's really "part of the OS", since it's designed -and forced by law, too- to turn itself off completely if replaced by the user.