AVIRA antivirus any good?

[wulf109]

I replaced AVG with Avira. Is Avira reliable?

[CobraPilot]

Avira gets consistently good marks from many PC publications.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/290836/review/avira_antivir_personal.html (rated 4.5/5)

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/avira_antivir_free_edition (rated 6/10)

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361868,00.asp

[Moontrash]

the pay or free version is quite good...at the top of any review list as the best AV...norton works but is highly bloated. Avira catches most of the bad stuff there is. ESET NOD 32 is another good one

[pepegot1]

I used it to get rid of a virus.

[themaster1]

It's simple Avira antivirus is from a German company, they care about their customers, unlike others.
Same goes for brands like terratec, technisat for dvb cards, they make quality products and not expensive compared to others.

[Poppa_Meth]

Avira, Avast, and MSE are the top 3 now. Any of them do a good job. AVG has long since fallen from grace.

[Lawbringer]

Just personal experience here, but I had installed the free Avira antivirus, and two days later my PC was infected with the "Windows Defender" virus (or whatever it's called).

[handyguy]

MS has a free package, Microsoft Security Essentials.

Avast is also free & nice.

[lordsmurf]

Best available choice, yes.
However, I uninstalled mine, as it kept marking Goldwave and BatchRename as viruses.
I need those two apps more than I need anti-v

[freebird73717]

one thing to remember is that a lot of times an antivirus is not enough. A lot of the nasties out there are malware that normal antivirus software just won't touch.

I'd also recommend Malwarebytes

They have a free version and a paid pro version. The free version is just an on demand scanner. The paid verison offers realtime blocking and protection. It will work just fine in the background along with your antivirus.

[1337assassin]

i recommend Rising AV.. i've been using it for many years now.. its offered alot, and come a very long way, and consistently improved remarkably, and is by far the best, safest, most secure, most powerful and end-user-oriented AV software i've ever had the pleasure of using.

u dont have control of your computer until you have Rising.

[1337assassin]

Update:

just thought I'd update my previous comments

for the last year or two, Rising has switched to an all free version with suspicious behavior and little to no development imo..

i dont recommend Rising anymore.. I have a feeling it was taken over by the government and made free to be propagated into as many computers as possible for monitoring & control purposes..

i dont have proof of that, of course.. but i suspect its something like that..

how else do you go from one of the best, most transparent, fast, and powerful paid AVs on the market, to one of the shadiest & crappiest?

i'll tell you how, give computer users WAY TOO MUCH control over their own computers so government agencies can do exactly nothing to your computer, while your company is set up in one of those countries, and have that company bought/ stolen from you (or make you just disappear), and then get it de-fanged, de-clawed, modified to actually help the government, and have the reputation used to get it passed around freely on computers everywhere, all for some sinister purpose..

practically the only thing transparent about Rising anymore is the fact that something Sinister is going on..

so anyway, i've now been using ESET NOD 32 Smart Security for a couple years now.. its not bad for an AV, it does what most other AV's do and more, and does it a bit better, probably the current best on the market... but it has nowhere near the control & power you had with the older paid versions of Rising

[1337assassin]

funny how the taking over at Rising coincided with most every AV on the market automatically & permanently deleting everything on your hard-drive that might even be construed as something pirated, as a default setting.. bringing me to suspect the take over was from western countries, likely america, which then simply set out to destroy the AV's usage & credibility.

From that point on, practically anything & everything with the word 'pirate', 'crack', or 'key' in it was swiftly and forever removed from your computer by default secret scans as soon as you installed it.. under the guise of "potentially unwanted" items... especially Norton..

whatever you do, never, ever, use any Norton product ever again.. they've become a tool for far more invasive control agendas coming out of 'free' countries

ESET NOD 32 Smart Security was the only one I found on the market NOT stealing & deleting all your files automatically without even your permission, by default

It was the only one with even some semblance of respect and control for the end user. All the others seemed like they were made to attack, destroy, accuse, belittle, condemn, & punish you, AND make YOU pay for it.. They spun you right around, bent you over, and had their way with you, and left you like a raped little child bleeding on the floor of your own house, still clinging to the money you had ready to pay for the candy they said they were selling.. then they walked right over and ripped the money out of your trembling little tear-soaked hand before anonymously stealing off out the door

Of course, that's since been modified or changed in the last several months, so that now, most programs are not doing broad sweep & deletes of all your programs by default on start up.. but it'll likely be something they set out to do every few years.. so watch out for their newest tricks and schemes in the future created to delete all the mp3's from your computer with the name of any artist which should only really be available on CD, or whatever else kind of doomsday overbearing destruction of your personal property they have in mind or can scheme up from their hilltop mansions to oppress and destroy your freedom & life to further their personal profit.

[JohnnyBob]

Like you I considered switching from free Avast to free Avira antivirus but decided to stay with Avast. The main factor in my case is that Avira claims *not* to be compatible with the ZoneAlarm firewall which I use. My son has free Avira on his laptop and it is always popping up advertisements, which I wouldn't tolerate either. Maybe they can be tweaked away, I don't know.

Free avast is still satisfactory to me in customized and hobbled form. They've added a lot of things I don't want, and at least one which I have to purposely block with a tweak. But I'm able to get it up and working OK with some effort. It must be tweaked somewhat again after each program update, so I do those very infrequently, only once or twice a year.

Free AVG has developed a bad rep as a resource hog. I used it years ago. I'm not familiar with the other free ones.

[ranchhand]

Lawbringer said:

infected with the "Windows Defender"

Be aware that scam viruses like Windows Defender and FBI are among the newly popular infection methods by hackers now that enter through Active X /Java from compromised or "booby trapped" websites. Since all antivirus programs recognize Active X as a part of the Windows Operating system, they do not block any script that runs through it from a website. Hackers now exploit this and load a virus on your computer. When I was working at my last job I took several of these type of viruses off office computers. Norton did nothing to prevent infections repeatedly. The best protection I have found is the Firefox add-on, Noscript. At first it needs configuring, but later runs in the background preventing these type of infections.
As far as Avira.... the best, IMHO. Simple permission sets can stop the popups. You can also blacklist the avnotify.exe and ipmgui.exe files in your firewall and that will prevent them from running as well. Not a big deal.