Antivirus is a key to protect our security and privacy against phishing and all king of malware, spyware, adware, ransomware, etc…
Criteria to select an antivirus
Here’s what you should consider before choosing a free antivirus:
Mandatory criteria
- Multilayered malware protection
- Frequent and automatic update of virus patterns
Recommended criteria
- Light on battery and CPU consumption
- Open-source app is always a plus
Best free antivirus
We will not make any full detailed review here are there a plenty of website doing. We’ll just propose a quick short list.
There are plenty of antivirus, which all have free offers, including more or less services. The top players you’ll that you will find in most of the rankings are:
- McAfee (US)
- Norton (US)
- TrendMicro (US)
- Kaspersky (Russia)
- BitDefender (Romania)
- Avast Czech Republic)
- AVG (Czechoslovakia)
- Sophos (UK)
- …
We do not take sides for or against the allegations against Kaspersky Labs in this post regarding some potential inappropriate ties to the Russian government since we did not make any study on that.
AV Test
The AV-TEST GmbH is the independent research institute for IT security from Germany. For more than 15 years, their experts have guaranteed quality-assuring comparison and individual tests of virtually all internationally relevant IT security products.
- AV Ttest: https://www.av-test.org/
Other ressources
- PC Mag: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-free-antivirus-protection
- Tech Radar: https://www.techradar.com/best/best-antivirus
- Tomsguide: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-antivirus,review-2588.html
Our Opinion
We like BitDefenser, which is an advanced anti-malware scanner with good phishing & fraud protection. It is pretty light on CPU. There is no ad. It is respectful of the battery. It has an excellent detection rate. It is available on iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, and even linux.