What antivirus should I get in 2016

I still find hard to believe that antiviruses still exist in 2016
Even worse is that many people put a lot of faith into them, while ignoring the most basic security principles.

Alejandro85 said:

I still find hard to believe that antiviruses still exist in 2016
Even worse is that many people put a lot of faith into them, while ignoring the most basic security principles.

i got avast premier, anyone else notice that all the rundll32,exe's disappeared ??

alejandro85 said:

i still find hard to believe that antiviruses still exist in 2016
even worse is that many people put a lot of faith into them, while ignoring the most basic security principles.

i think the av's exist because of numerous exploits. I dont feel well talking bad about ms in their forums but the only software release i ever used with no updates or corrections was dos 5 and i niss those days dearly.

I absolutely agree with Alejandro85. Having a good Anti-virus is very essential however, as the adage..."prevention is better than cure", preventing malware from accessing your files in the first place is highly recommendable. The threat i encounter the most would have to be computer worms. At first i under-estimated computer worms but then i came across a malware blog-post that claims worms actually reproduce more actively than viruses. As opposed to waiting until damage is done, i think this article generally gives a good summary on how you can recognise malware from the very beginning.

etaf88 said:

I absolutely agree with Alejandro85. Having a good Anti-virus is very essential however, as the adage..."prevention is better than cure", preventing malware from accessing your files in the first place is highly recommendable. The threat i encounter the most would have to be computer worms. At first i under-estimated computer worms but then i came across a malware blog-post that claims worms actually reproduce more actively than viruses. As opposed to waiting until damage is done, i think this article generally gives a good summary on how you can recognise malware from the very beginning.

That article is mostly crap than useful information. I totally agree that prevention is better than cure, but problem with antiviruses and its advertisements (like that that article) is that they tend to give a false sense of security, and many people believe that an antivirus is all they need to be completely safe, and don't worry with steps that give real security.

For example, the article you link goes to great length in explaining the different types of malware and the like, but fails to note that the distinction is merely academic without too much impact in real life and the prevention measures are pretty much the same. More often than not, malware mixes characteristics of each subtype, and it has been much more difficult to classify them at all.

About the prevention, it greatly remarks the importance of antiviruses and software updates (which are mostly true), but merely mentions firewall (without mentioning the importance of its configuration) and completely fails to even mention the most basic security principles, like running in a low privilege account, setting up the most limited permissions as possible and taking backups gets very little attention.

And they make their biggest mistake when they suggest to use antiviruses to remove viruses. That's utterly wrong. As every security expert knows, once a computer got infected by malware or compromised by a hacker, it's game over, you must reformat the system and reinstall everything from scratch if you ever want a clean and safe system again. This just reinforces the myth that it's worth to try to clean the affected systems and that a couple of antiviruses can reliably deal with unknown infections.

Instead of all those myths out there, I would suggest following good security practices, which is very rarely done (and Windows defaults don't help). Antiviruses have their use and in some cases help, but they're far from the only thing that should be used. What disturbs me the most is the enormous amount of faith people put in AVs, and the lack of knowledge in anything else. Times have changed and many factors that lead to the AV development no longer hold, malware generally has many different characteristics and both detection and removal is much different from 30 years ago.

It's just a basic summary of malware prevention really. I found it useful.

Comodo Antivirus would be a good choice for you. As you are in need of antivirus for your simple home system then this particular AV would be a great choice.