Other major antivirus companies, including Norton, ESET and Kaspersky, didn’t respond to emailed requests for such information.īut trying to stay secure by relying on antivirus software misses the way hackers have evolved, said Bob Lord, who revamped the Democratic National Committee’s cybersecurity strategy for the 20 elections after the party was hacked by Russian intelligence in 2016. More than half of the revenue the antivirus company Malwarebytes made last year came from personal users, a spokesperson for the company said. McAfee, the once-ubiquitous Windows antivirus program, still has more than 20 million paying customers, a spokesperson said. “We test it regularly, and it’s one of the top products we’ve seen. For much of Microsoft’s history, computer experts worried that Windows machines were susceptible to viruses, and there was no firm consensus about what third-party programs people needed to stay safe.īut Microsoft Defender, the free and automatic antivirus program now built into Windows, has gotten so effective that it’s as good as anything customers can pay for, said Simon Edwards, the founder of SE Labs, a London-based company that compares and tests antivirus programs. It’s important, however, for users to keep their systems protected through automatic software updates offered by all major software providers. Others can help prevent identity theft.īut most experts agree that the built-in antivirus protections on any major system - a fully updated Windows or Apple computer or an Android phone or iPhone - already protect against viruses just as well as the major programs people can pay for. Some antivirus programs can offer certain benefits, such as tools that help users avoid email-based phishing campaigns that steal sensitive login credentials. “I think he just felt like if he spent the money, the investment of paying for it was going to protect him from everything.” “He had no understanding of those two technologies, really,” Brunty said. They were once considered vital to prevent nearby hackers from spying on online activity, but security experts now say that thanks to additional built-in security protections in most major browsers, virtual private networks are useful in only a handful of specific scenarios, like streaming video that is restricted in certain countries or getting around government censors like China’s “Great Firewall.”

But the greatest threats most users face are no longer from viruses, particularly now that so much personal computing happens over the internet.īrunty said his dad also paid for a virtual private network, which routes a computer’s internet traffic through a third party.

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