I've been paying for a subscription anti-virus for a while now. I've heard that there are some good free ones out there. I've been nervous about trying one, but now may be the time.
I surf the web a lot, but I do use noscript and uBlock Origin on Firefox and uBlock Origin on Chrome. I'm hoping that helps.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good free anti-virus software and/ or malware remover?
I've been using the free version of Bitdefender since 2013 and it has served me well. It's lightweight and does the job. Edit: Ah, I just saw the Linux tag. I don't think it's compatible.
The Windows Defender is surprisingly good, if you are smart and know how to use the internet. Pi-Hole blocks all the ad networks which is where the bad stuff comes from now a days. I run that at the house; at work we use a Trend Web Proxy that I have dialed in pretty well. NoScript is a must any more, good choice on that. Avast and AVG just merged. Not sure how I feel about that honestly. AVG became a bloated mess that is not worth the price any more. Techradar runs a yearly antivirus roundup, as does Maximum PC (but they have gone a bit downhill lately). I use Bitdefender, not had any issues yet.
Thank you for the recommendation. I've noticed that people, often tech people, say that X works well if you're smart. I can't judge if I'm smart or not. Maybe if I have to ask the question, then I'm not smart enough? Could you explain a bit more about Pi-Hole? I looked it up, but it's not intuitively obvious for me. Is that an app that you run over your Bitdefender?
Being curious enough to ask the question, alone, makes you smarter than 60% of the US population. Being curious enough to do just a bit more than ask questions? That makes you smarter still. I encourage brains and their use! Ok, going to start from zero. If this seems EIL5, sorry, but I also want to help the audience get it. When you connect to, say, www.hubski.com, you computer first calls out to a server called "Domain Name System" or DNS for short. This DNS server hosts a database of websites, domains and locations that converts hubski.com into a numerical value called an IP Address and figures out what the path from you to Hubski needs to take. There is a fantastical amount of "more" to talk about there, but this is the simple version. Google's DNS servers are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and these are what most people use. There are thousands of other IP addresses that act like DNS servers. In my case, the DNS server is a computer in my personal network, the "pi-hole" that is running on an Ubuntu Server. So instead of using Google, or my ISP to convert "www.hubski.com" to numbers, my personal DNS builds a database. Only in this case, my DNS will convert known advertising networks into a garbage IP address that ends up nowhere. So you go to, say, CNN's web site and all the stuff from "buzzfeed.com" will show up as blank. All the stuff from "doubleclick.com" will show as blank. All the known malevolent stuff like "javacodethathacksyourphone.com" will end up going nowhere. This form of security is often called DNS poisoning for that reason. You can even run porn and content filtering on a machine like this and use it to filter web content. This is more correctly called a "Proxy" server in that it acts like a proxy for the real path to the internet. Most businesses, schools, hospitals etc will use a proxy server/service to protect their networks. So, when anyone on my network at home connects to an internet site, I usually get a comment "hey everything looks weird" because all the ads are gone. Some people will try to shame me for denying ads... honestly fuck those people. My security and privacy is more important to me. Imgur, for example, was showing terrible java-code infected ads for THREE WHOLE DAYS, ads that were hijacking phones and computers to install malware. The number one virus vector right now is a toss up from infected emails and infected ad networks. If you have further questions, let me know and I will do my best to answer them.Maybe if I have to ask the question, then I'm not smart enough?
Could you explain a bit more about Pi-Hole? I looked it up, but it's not intuitively obvious for me. Is that an app that you run over your Bitdefender?