Antivirus program PC / Laptop yes or no?

I wanted to ask for your opinions on whether you find it important to have an anti-virus program or not.

My stepfather thinks that's good and also has some, someone I know is that an antivirus program is pointless, because if you pay attention to what you click does not get a virus, it would also slow down the performance of the PC. And he meant somehow that one has the virus either way on the PC or something like that.

It will now answer you again to 100% a few sly that you do not need such a thing, that you just have to be careful that the Windows own on-board resources are enough, blablabla.

As a normal user such an antivirus program is very helpful for you and you should also get one.

Just do not please these free offers.

But in one, I have to contradict your stepfather: Do not let several run at the same time, they hinder each other.

You can always, even if you take care, download any malicious program. Already as an email attachment. With AV, this is immediately deleted, reported, or blocked. You also get warnings when a phishingmail has arrived. Today's AV hardly burden the PC.

It's not as easy as your grandfather means, but it comes very close to the truth.

Anti-virus software is EXTREMELY overrated. For 25 years, the user is persuaded by all sides, that would be the only or most important protective measure.

It is not so. There's no AV that protects the PC as advertised with a 99 + x% security or finds so many viruses.

At best, 10% will be found. Malware is evolving faster than AVs, with more than 1 million new malware coming into circulation every day (!) Many years ago! No AV comes with the detection.

Importing security updates for system and applications - and of course backups for the worst case - is much more reliable and effective.

Many malware infections are not dependent on clicking or downloading something. Therefore, caution alone is not enough. And an AV can at least occasionally also notice something.

Charges are NO better. They just have more features that they want to justify the price.

I can use the Windows Defender and as your stepfather says.

For almost 30 years I have only had the antivirus program between my ears. That does not mean that I would not even check it once a month, if it works well - does it.

Hi

Yes / Yes…

Yes.

Yes, that's the way it is. And the larger the code base of an application, the greater the percentage of programming errors. You can, for example, Times at heise.de to research how often well-known AV manufacturers in the headlines were, because the new version or the signature update for row-wise useless systems provided. McAfee is in the lead, but also Kaspersky and Symantec and of course AntiVir and all the others are there again and again.

Apart from the fact that the classic computer virus, against which these AV tools were originally developed, are no longer the actual problem.
Rather, they are "simple" programs that do unwanted things, be it just a modal dialog.

I can only half agree with that. Malware is a serious problem, both spying and data sharing, and ransomware or bitcoin miners and the like.

What you mean, is under adware and is extremely conspicuous and almost always avoidable by simply choosing the custom installation of the installer and there in the options to deselect the adware. But most users want it to go fast and save three clicks, and then get annoyed with advertising that the ad blocker can't prevent.

No, I mean a virus with a narrower sense. So no trojans, spyware or ransomware.
A self-replicating program that fits into existing files.

Such "viruses" are virtually gone since ~ 2004. The layman calls EVERYTHING "virus".

That's why I said yes "classic"

Well, these "classics" were mostly about destroying data, making systems useless and putting the programming skills of their makers in a strong light. The times are long gone. Today, data collected from the victims and extortion funds make a fortune and therefore malware must be inconspicuous or must not affect the system. Nonetheless, the age-old idea that a suddenly slower system would be infected by a virus persists.