To help guarantee your privacy and safety while surfing the dark web or more in general the internet, a decent antivirus (or virus scanner) is no luxury. Let’s give you some clear advice in stead of infinite comparisons between software packages.
What do you need an antivirus to do?
Actually, quite easy: be the best antivirus software around. Let’s break it down into handy items on a list.
Our shopping list for the ideal virus scanner
- The antivirus software must be able to detect new viruses rapidly and keep us secure. Reliable and frequent updates are a must.
- The virus scanner must help to protect our privacy: we want no malware on our computer that will expose our identity to the outside world or to hackers.
- The application must be easy to use: no hassle, no fuzz. You do not need to have an extra degree to use or customize the scanner.
- High speed & low system load: we do not want an application that hogs all the power of our system, while ‘simply running in the background’.
- The solution must be cheap: we do not want to pay a huge amount of money for this (relatively simple) task. Also, if we can avoid it: no subscription-based models and no hidden fees.
The consequences of our wishlist
- The list of what we want is extensive: we want frequent updates, and an excellent protection from (un)known malware and, above all, our privacy protected. With this in mind we can forget -any- “free” (trial) versions, but the challenge stays to keep it affordable. Does quality come for an economic price?
- Big brands make “suites”, bundle everything and aren’t cheap. Remember al the bloat ware on your brand new pc you bought with all the trial software on it? Remember how slow it was until you uninstalled all that crap? Big names make big applications. We do not need all the extras, we need a simple but effective, cheap antivirus. Exit big brand names like Norton, McAfee or the Russian Kaspersky. Too slow and too big (and too expensive). A best practice anyway: if a hacker would write a new virus or malware, it would target those well-known brands first to disable their detection software…
Our recommendations
Base on our investigation, we can recommend you 2 solutions which won’t break the bank, but which will keep you safe and secure. These antivirus software packages do what they promise to do:
Antivirus #1: Panda
Panda as a trustworthy brand for 30 years has recently been making waves in the antivirus market. The first antivirus by Panda was released in 2005 and they have been improving it since. Their unique approach of cloud software helps to isolate and protect against the latest zero-day malware threats, keeping your devices secure from day 0 (and believe me, that’s better than from day 1)
- Most important features:
- Blocks 99.9% of available malware samples (EICAR, 2020)
- Easy interface
- Low impact on your computer system
- Very good speed performance on scanning while handling files
- Some false positives while scanning
- very basic VPN included (but not that usable)
- Works on Windows, MacOS and Android
- 30-day money back guarantee
- Price: between $23.99 (essential) and $166.99 (premium), depending on the active promotions. We link to the best deal for you. Panda proves you can get a lot of value for almost no money.
- Our advice: buy the essential version. More than enough, unless you are an advanced user, than consider getting the premium version
Alternative choice: antivirus #2: AVG
AVG boasts more than 200 million active users, and has also been growing in popularity on mobile devices. Like Panda, they have solutions available for home and business users.
- Most important features:
- Blocks 99.7% of available malware samples (EICAR, 2020)
- Good interface
- Normal to low impact on your computer system
- Good speed performance on scanning while handling files
- Few false positives while detecting
- Works on Windows, MacOS and Android
- 30-day money back guarantee
- Price: between $69.99 (Normal) and 119.99 (Ultimate)
- Our advice: buy the regular version if you need protection for 1 PC only. Advanced users might want to opt for the Ultimate version on superior systems
In SDW you trust
When choosing an antivirus based upon a review, you want be able to trust that site. A lot of other review sites are computer generated, auto-translated websites going for the quick cash.
We however believe that, based upon our decades of working in IT-related services, we can give you a decent recommendation. Based upon experience and research we offer you some alternatives we believe in. We also try to keep this information as up to date as possible so you can decide for yourself which solution to pick.
We only recommend something we are perfectly happy using ourselves at home.