Do You Need a Paid Antivirus in 2021? Is Windows Defender Good Enough?

hey what's up guys my name is tom spark and welcome back to another video in this video we're going to be discussing if you need antivirus in 2021 going on in the upcoming years is antivirus still essential do you still need it is it kind of useless we're going to discuss that in this video hey guys why i don't believe that you need a paid antivirus and i'm going to explain why in this video i do recommend using a paid vpn service and here on the channel i've reviewed over 60 plus vpns giving you the most accurate and unbiased rating system that exists for vpns go ahead and check it out on vpntureless.com if you want to help support this video one other thing guys is that would i reference antivirus in this video primarily i will be referring to paid antivirus or the normal kind of antivirus you would think of when referencing the term stuff like kapersky norton bitdefender eset panda sophos all these antivirus are what i would dub antivirus or paid antivirus programs so guys one of the reasons i decided to make this video is because i've seen the idea floated around by people that you know anti-virus is still very popular a lot of people are still using antivirus it's still an essential tool that you need in your toolkit to stay safe online and to keep your computer secure however for me i'm someone who hasn't really used a serious anti-virus program for probably the last 10 years or so and there are a lot of reasons for this but throughout this entire time i've never had a virus or any kind of issue with my computers related to viruses now throughout this entire time i've used malwarebytes as well as the the paid version of malwarebytes which is like a live thing that kind of prevents you from going on clicking on certain links or websites not only that i've also been using windows defender which is pretty much like an anti-virus and firewall solution but you can even just use the free version of malwarebytes which is like a malware scanner that removes malware as well as windows defender which is free so in some ways having a complete protection that is free has been something that i've been using for a pretty long time and i've been completely okay but some people might make the argument you know that it's not as good as a fully fledged paid antivirus but my argument to that would be how do you define good most people would point to windows defender and these other free tools as not being good because they're not ranked on websites or they're not rated as highly or recommended by anyone who talks about antivirus all it takes is going to all these generic websites like this one recommending you to use norton mcafee bitdefender all these other ones i mean if you look at the ownership of this website it's already owned by cape technologies so would you really trust websites like this to recommend antivirus when they're owned by companies that could have a conflict of interest not only that but it's ironic because keep crossrider these companies have really bad reputations if you google them um being involved with adware and malware production and stuff like that you can find lots of articles uh if you just google you know keep crossrider malware but it's ironic because they now own this website that recommends security products like antivirus very weird right all these corporate magazines are recommending you these paid antivirus that you don't really need but if you do your research you could find some rare articles actually telling you that windows defender is really good good enough in this article that i did find if they're doing it did a little bit of digging around in 2019 according to a german independent research windows defender was actually one of the top products receiving a perfect six out of six in terms of protection performance and usability it shared the same honors with stuff like kapersky norton and f-secure but that said microsoft software had significant advantage over those three that is it's free according to this test and these results which is ironic because you could find this results here but if you look at and you can see the results here look uh pretty much 100 percent 97.99 but if you go to this website itself and go to this page for some reason windows defender isn't listed here um at all you know so that just goes to show you you know what what the hell is going on uh not even listed i couldn't find it i did a search uh not anywhere there and then you go on the same website and look it's just as good but firstly i kind of want to take a look at the idea you know how many people are still using antivirus is it on the decline this would be something that's kind of hard to analyze without like making some kind of a research poll or something like that scientifically but if we take a look at google search trends this gives us a good indication of um a general downtrend in terms of people searching for antivirus so you can look at the term antivirus and you can see back in 2004 it was extremely popular and you know before you know the 90s going up to this time it seemed more important for computers because people just generally didn't have the knowledge of what not to do on the internet not only that but windows and all the different operating systems at the time weren't as secure it was just kind of like the wild west and i think most of the problems and most of the viruses that people were getting back then is because people just didn't really know what they were doing and the people creating viruses and these sketchy websites were able to trick people into downloading viruses much easier so if you look at this kind of macro trend here we can see antivirus on a general decline to where it is now we also have a brand like bitdefender which has pretty much been here the entire time and if you take a zoom out you can also see that at its peak it got here and it's just been going down since 2006 so the term antivirus the general kind of germs as well as the brands themselves most likely are following this pattern so from this i could reasonably assume that antivirus is not as popular as it once was people aren't searching for it as much probably aren't using it as much either not only that but i think i can make that assumption pretty well because if you look at all the antivirus solutions out there norton bitdefender all these different antivirus things that are all kind of integrating add-ons to make their product more useful they're adding vpns they're adding uh hack scans to check if your email's been hacked all sorts of these little add-on components to make the product um like hey you know you really need this because it has everything that you might need and people might not really think they need antivirus anymore so i think there is something to be said that antivirus generally just isn't used as much or wanted as much as it once was additionally we've also seen the advent of mobile technology in fact most iphones are pretty resistant to viruses as well and most of the anti-virus programs if you put them on your phone they don't actually remove viruses or anything like that or even really scan they're mostly just side components like they'll kind of make sure you don't get any calls or something like that i've seen but they don't really do anything on iphone and more and more people are using iphones and mobile technologies like ipads that antivirus isn't really needed there either additionally i think that as antivirus has become less popular people have gotten more aware of what not to do online um there have been also other tools that are more important than antivirus i would say probably one of the most important things you can use is a password manager because it's much more common to have your stuff hacked by having a weak password than by getting a virus on your computer most people have simple passwords and it's pretty easy to be a part of a leak and people get files of you know all the different passwords that have been a part of a data leak and it's very easy to get into accounts this way so having a password manager i think is the most important thing not only that but vpns have also been increasingly important too to protect your internet privacy online so your isp can't see what websites you're browsing they also protect your ip and give you some level of anonymity as well while browsing the internet i think consumers just generally don't have as much time to really tick every single box so instead of just getting anti-virus they might decide instead to just focus on a password manager or vpn or something like that and decide they don't really need antivirus if they're just going to be on their phone most of the time or maybe using a la mac or even using linux which can't really get that many viruses either so at the end of the day do i think you still need antivirus in 2021 well i think for the basic internet savvy um user i don't really think you do a combination of malwarebytes scanner as well as something like windows defender should be good for the most part however that said there are things you should keep in mind not to get a virus and like i said i think this is one of the reasons we've seen antivirus decline because people are generally just more educated on how to use the internet how to use their computers than they were when anti-virus were in their prime here's some quick education don't click on links and emails don't download sketchy files try not to use a laptop on a public wi-fi hotspot always update your operating systems and programs don't use weak passwords don't visit fake websites or sketchy websites don't click on malicious ads or sketchy ads or pop-ups and do not use unpatched software there are also some other annoyances i have with antivirus like compatibility issues resource hogging sometimes antivirus causes issues with my vpns some of the firewall stuff causes issues and it proves to be a really big headache sometimes they're overzealous in not doing certain things like i was testing out eset a while ago and it would be kind of anal about like oh obs is trying to use your webcam do you want it to allow it these kind of things are just annoying and not stuff i need to be really worrying about so that's another reason why i don't think they're worth it they just caused more headaches um and yeah anyways guys that's just my opinion though if you like antivirus and you think it makes you more secure or you feel more safe using it by all means continue to do so and spend your own money the way you want to but instead i would recommend just some of the stuff um common sense as well as a combination of free tools is gonna probably be good for most people especially if you're pretty internet savvy or computer savvy or just kind of basic savvy anyways guys thanks for checking out this video and i'll see you again very soon

Channel: Tom Spark Reviews

Views: 6,111

Rating: 4.7294688 out of 5

Keywords: best antivirus, antivirus software, best antivirus software, best antivirus 2021, is windows defender a good antivirus

Id: dh7sR8sQHlY

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021