7 minutes ago, St Mawgan said:

Not once in my experience. I guess you also need to know how to use a computer 😉

Two IT people and a programmer at my company told me Defender was better than nothing but not much. I think they knew how to use a computer. https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/is-windows-defender-good-enough-to-protect-your-pc-by-itself

7 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Two IT people and a programmer at my company told me Defender was better than nothing but not much. I think they knew how to use a computer. https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/is-windows-defender-good-enough-to-protect-your-pc-by-itself

Three IT people, two programmers and a cleaner at my company told me otherwise. One of them invented the computer so I'd rather trust them. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/all-about-addiction/201911/when-you-know-nothing-think-you-know-everything

Frankly, in today's world, you "pays yer money and makes yer choice". AV was more critical back in FSX days in that they left little hooks in your system that "could" cause stutters, etc. ESET had the least footprint and interference. With today's hardware this is not as critical on a strong system. The major players are all good and do a decent job of AV but I prefer ESET  simply because of the smaller footprint. It also has a gamer mode that will switch on so there's minimal AV activity when gaming.

But honestly, if it works on your system and you have no issues, I see no reason to switch.

7 minutes ago, St Mawgan said:

Three IT people, two programmers and a cleaner at my company told me otherwise. One of them invented the computer so I'd rather trust them. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/all-about-addiction/201911/when-you-know-nothing-think-you-know-everything

I generally ask a bloke down the pub.

 

None. There is no reason to get virus protection. The best virus protection is yourself. Don't go on fishy websites, dont download things without verifying if they are legit, etc. As others said Windows Defender is more than enough. If you want to be double safe run bitdefender or malware bytes periodically. Also a pop up blocker never hurts

MS Defender is fine to use and as good as anything else. 

It used to be that built in windows protection was kind of a joke, but MS has gotten much better and is generally seen as a good choice among the industry.

Sounds like there are at least as many opinions as there are AV vendors. For the little that it may be worth, I'm in the Webroot camp myself, but seriously who actually knows how good any of these are?

anyone have any thoughts about 'Comodo'?  My office wants me to install this on my home pc for when I periodically work from home.  However, when they pushed install on me it kind of locked everything down.  My msfs linker addon did not work which immediately made me try MSFS, which - would not even start!

So, anyone have any experience with this thing?

Defender is probably the most gamer friendly. Why, because just about every game is developed on a computer running defender natively. Can't get any more game tested than that.

Also vote for just using defender, and avoid fishy websites, stay away from po,,, and you will be good. Other virus protectors are useually just system hogs and can actually be worse than the virus itself:p

2 minutes ago, Phantoms said:

Defender is probably the most gamer friendly. Why, because just about every game is developed on a computer running defender natively. Can't get any more game tested than that.

Agreed.

Those scanners may play good with the sim itself but are even more nasty if you have a networked setup and/or are using several sims. I had been using Kaspersky for many years until it blocked my traffic between the main PC and the networked one (I think it was between XP11 and a gauge addon at that time). Deactivating / opening ports didn't even help, I had to uninstall the whole thingy to get the program working. Of course I can't exclude I was just too stupid for this.

I tried another couple of popular scanners (and paid for them) and they gave me other issues. Now, I have been relying on Defender for more than 5 years, and no issues since.

Yes, you can look into tests, but out of 10 test you get 10 results, changing from year to year moreover. And I am not sure some of them are as "independent" as they claim.

Kind regards, Michael

As long as you are not up iffy stuff then Windows Defender has been plenty good enough for years. No need to buy anything.

Defender here with MSFS install folder excluded.

sp

I find that Bitdefender never interferes with MSFS and protects more than most. For instance I can't read emails in the morning without it blocking access to my system from the senders. These are just the normal junk mails that almost everyone gets every day. It doesn't alter or move the email, it just tells you that this message will 'watch' you and the sender hopes you will react, such as clicking to download images.

It's also more aggressive at pointing out dangerous websites than most AV programs. But you can also just click to instantly avoid that warning when you don't believe it. As I said it never has interfered at all with anything related to MSFS. I think because nothing with the program files looked suspicious. 

MS Defender and Malwarebytes. Never had a problem.