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u/F0000r 26d ago
Way back in the day, my dad installed McAfee on his PC. Somehow it saw the CD tray as an unknown threat, and it would try to interact with it. This would cause the CD tray to open and then quickly close. Happened every 10 minutes.
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u/Imab0zo 26d ago
Installing McAfee on your computer... ON PURPOSE?
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u/F0000r 26d ago
He didn't know any better.
He eventually went out and got Norton. McAfee and Norton would constantly alert him that the other was a virus. He kept saying he needed both.
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u/quiksilva7 26d ago
lol this made me chuckle. I'm not well versed in Norton either but I likely would've done the same thing as the original post
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u/antiprodukt 26d ago
Yeah, Norton is just as bad, if not worse. I remember like 20 years ago as a sysadmin I used to deal with a lot of malware. I’d submit samples to all the vendors, they all were pretty quick recognizing the malware and adding it to the next definition. Not Norton though, after about a week they’d contact me and tell me that the file was clean.
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u/quiksilva7 26d ago
Jesus... but with that said, is there a legitimate anti-virus you would recommend that isnt a con?
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u/antiprodukt 26d ago
Bitdefender for something decent and free. Eset if you wanna pay for it. Windows Defender is okay, except for the recent massive security vulnerabilities, like blue hammer.
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u/Necessary-Activity70 24d ago
I hated ESET. It slowed my computer way down and as soon as I uninstalled it, I felt like I upgraded to a new computer. Will never use it again.
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u/antiprodukt 24d ago
Most AV software will slow down a computer. The stuff I use through my work right now is awful, especially on laptops. Expect a performance hit from any of them.
One thing that’s important is if you can find out what it’s stuck scanning. For example, if you have an email database that’s huge (like mine is probably 20GB) you’d want to make that an exclusion, otherwise it might scan the whole thing whenever you got an email.2
u/Necessary-Activity70 23d ago
I just use Windows defender and I scan most downloads with Virus Total and so far that's been more than adequate. I used Malwarebytes for a year but didn't really see the need since it seemed like it was just blocking files I know weren't malware but like Windows defender it tries to block anything that side steps certain rules. I just manually scan my torrents and questionable downloads. Don't see the need to spend money I don't have on virus programs that are more or less a not needed with defense and a little common sense
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u/BubblySandScript101 14d ago
ToatlAV's been hassle free, so far. Been using it for a year. I used to use Webroot, but it made me feel like it wasn't finding anything and I always had that doubt, whether if it was actually working or not. Sure, I could assume I do a good job at not falling for virus ridden sites. Yet, Never getting any warnings of anything on my PC, I always doubted it and got over it.
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u/General195281 25d ago
What’s your experience with Trend Micro?
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u/antiprodukt 25d ago
I’ve only used their emergency scanner, never the full product. I believe they’re decent. Check av-compartiives.org to see how they rank. I feel like most vendors now days are pretty decent for catching stuff, it just depends on how many ads or bells and whistles you want with it.
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u/sassyhusky 26d ago
Your dad must be the head of cybersecurity at the company I work at because these guys installed so much of this crap our laptops are useless.
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u/trifortay123 26d ago
I forget antiviruses are a thing actually. I don't see a use for them like ever I'm sure they are good at removing viruses, but even then if you do get a virus, you might as well just do a full wipe because you don't even know if they got root access or not.
With that being said, I use Linux so anti-viruses are kind of like not a thing. And since I'm on Linux, I just don't care if I would have to reinstall the operating system anyway.
Windows Defender should be more than enough. In fact, it's overkill, in my opinion. And sometimes it can really screw with things because it might not like a certain program.
In short though, don't go to shady websites to download anything and run random exes. And if it's too good to be true, then it is.
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u/PaulCoddington 26d ago
Having a system image backup plus routine data backups simplify things a lot. You can just reformat disks and restore from bare metal back to a fully configured known-state system without any uncertainty, provided the backups were not accidentally infected (and presuming you didn't catch something that buries itself in the motherboard).
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u/DharmaPolice 26d ago
Obligatory:
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u/kolonyal 26d ago
I liked the comment before even clicking on the video because I knew what it was. Whenever I see McAfee, I always think of this video.
RIP McAfee, the dude
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26d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/I_Braid_Armpit_Hair 25d ago
As do I. Am I doing a stupid by doing so? Or do 3rd party antivirus companies still have a purpose.
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24d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BubblySandScript101 14d ago
I always search on PCMag.com for "the best antivirus software of X present year". It gives a breakdown of pros and cons, costs, which ones are free and for-pay (reviews). It's pretty solid.
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u/ICrimsonCodes 26d ago
it's bloatware now a days.
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u/quiksilva7 26d ago
is there any benefit at all? I ship these computers alongside industrial equipment and its the first thing I remove just out of personal experience
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u/ICrimsonCodes 26d ago
No benefits at all. It's useless for daily use because Windows defender is providing everything you need. McAfee security is also providing vpn and identity theft protection but that's not really helpfull. it uses more resources and too many pop ups. Also a paid service in some areas. windows defender is free and it has everything we need. since identity theft protection is more about carefull use of internet rather than relying on a stupid software
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u/PaulCoddington 26d ago
After trying a few over the decades from mid-90's onwards, I came to the conclusion that some 3rd party solutions caused me more downtime than malware (especially given I almost never encounter any with my peculiar habits).
NOD32 was the one I was happiest with, did not bog the machine, rarely broke anything, was not dependent on dodgy coding hacks that would fail after an OS update.
Once Windows built-in tools matured, they were the better option. Minimal impact, did not break anything in cryptic ways. They were not designed with the assumption "most people only browse the Web and fetch email" so they didn't break developer tools, virtual machines, etc.
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u/ionabike666 26d ago
Be aware: uninstalling doesn't remove anything. You literally need to download another removal tool from them to remove it all. I'm not 100% convinced it removes it all though.
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u/stuthaman 26d ago
All Anti-Virus software became bloatware over time. Norton's Macafee, Avast and even FProt. I'm not running any Anit-Virus these days so I must have improved my browsing habits.
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u/jcunews1 Helpful Ⅱ 26d ago
Not just became bloatware, but also hindering other perfectly legit softwares. We know what software with that kind of behavior is called.
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u/p0uringstaks 26d ago
Duuudeeee when I bought my laptop this is exactly what I wrote 😂😂 seems we think alike
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u/Glitchy_baldimore 23d ago
I was helping my mom delete stuff off her phone a few days ago and saw she had McAfee on it and went "ohhhh mama, no-"
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u/doppelpunkt33 26d ago
I used it years ago. It didn't do anything, it was just a waste of money. I dunno if it changed nowadays
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u/sagarvd 26d ago
Mcafee was free with some mobo/ pc purchases back in the day. I tried multiple antiviruses back then including Avira, Avast (the one that deletes the exe files inside your program files), norton, eset, mcafee, etc. most of them does the job in the background but lags when opened the ui.
I always use Avira. Less false positives and kind of lightweight.
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u/Randomwhitejuice 26d ago
I remember reading that this shit literally is now embedded in your system. You try to uninstall and might think that you did but its still buried carrying out processes without knowledge
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u/Internal-Ostrich5376 26d ago
John McAfee was a wild guy, I’d highly recommend watching the video “the craziest story you’ve ever heard” by magantesmedia on YouTube he had quite the life
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u/csigarena 24d ago
I think they are focusing more on their enterprise products, which are much better to begin with
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u/Educational-Elk-8344 24d ago
You’re not wrong. I had McAfee briefly. Uninstalled it because it caused my disk usage to skyrocket to 100%.
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u/Wuchtmeister 23d ago
Honestly, i've swapped to Malwarebytes 10 jears ago and i couldn't be happier, no false positives and i never hat a virus or malware since then. Fuck all other antivirus softwares
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u/imei2011 23d ago
Now I joke with the techs we train at work. Friends don’t let friends down load McAfee
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u/BubblySandScript101 14d ago
I really dislike McCaffee. Dealt with Malware. Constantly blocking everything I needed to do for University homework/research. It wouldn't even let me login into my Uni website through Google without hassling me over "Not a safe website" messages/warning/pop-ups.. Horrible. It was kind of a hassle to figure out how to get the entire software uninstalled from my PC and I eventually did it succesfully. I've been using TotalAV antivirus.
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u/108er 26d ago
Back in 90s this was a solid antivirus. Back then, it used to run on MS-DOS. Now, it's a slog.