https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kaspersky-rivals/exclusive-russian-antivirus-firm-faked-malware-to-harm-rivals-ex-employees-idUSKCN0QJ1CR20150814?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

Another vote for Malware Bytes. I installed it in my wife's laptop (win8.1) and we're both very pleased with it; i use it regularly when i want to scan files that i download on my Linux laptop and i intend to tranfer them to my Win7 offline PC (i'd use the Microsoft one, but since the PC isn't connected to the internet, i can't get the most recent updates). Keep in mind that the free version of MB doesn't offer real-time protection, only the paid version does.

"Ex-employees who prefer to remain anonymous". Most reliable source ever. And that article is from 2015 - if those claims had had any substance, Kaspersky would be out of business by now.

But of course it can't be that the Evil Russian have one of the most renowned IT security companies in the world, so let's just throw some shit at them.

I don't know about them creating viruses but they did have a very dodgy deal going with Facebook where Facebook claimed your computer was infected and locked you out of your account until you downloaded a Kapersky scanner thing (that was then very hard to remove and there are lots of reports of it breaking other anti virus).

They don't seem to use Kapersky any more though...

A proof, that Kaspersky AV doesn't have NSA backdoors.

Other AVs are treated well by US government (something to think about). ;)

Ouch... seems they switched that scam to Trend Micro later. https://www.forum.2globalnomads.info/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=70&p=101
Definitely a bad move by all parties involved.

Once upon a time, a slow as molasses misbehaving computer was a good sign you had a virus. Now it is more likely a sign of Anti-Virus

I'm just running with the default Windows Defender setup on Windows 10.

Before opening anything questionable I run the files through www.virustotal.com

I make sure my system is patched and programs updated.

And once in a while I run an offline scan using F-Secure's rescue CD or AVGs live-cd or similar. (e.g. boot from read-only media, without loading WIndows and what rootkit might be there, update over internet and scan filesystem/registry without risk of something nasty blocking you)

Still only managed to get infected once, and that was because a friend of mine had to look up something on my computer, and proceeded to download a keygen from a dodgy site.

Okay, I know this is hubris, and it's not an approach I'd recommend to anyone not computer savvy enough to understand the dangers, or someone who tends to do a lot of browsing of strange sites. Still, knock on wood, you get to use your computer without giving over half of your performance to a potential extra attack vector which likely still can't keep up with the newest threats. But if going on unfamiliar networks, at least make sure you have your firewall configured properly.

My Nigga! ;D

For anyone, who don't want to slow down theirs system with an Antivirus, you can use snapshots of the partition, where your OS is installed.
When you'll feel that something strange is going on, just revert back to the secure snapshot (takes around 5 minutes, depending on how many cores your CPU has and HDD speed). And voila - you have a fresh installation (you won't even need defragmentation after that - data will be written sequentially from your snapshot). ;)

There is free software (CloneZilla) and commercial ones as well (like Russian™ Acronis True Image).

Not sure I could be good friends with having to make images (even snapshots) regularly again. Did it in the 90s since Windows would bog itself down every other month and need reinstallation.

With the amounts of stuff which integrate into the registry, require encryption states for ongoing communication and most of all monthly windows update patching...I think it'd be too much bother to me unless I were more adventurous in what I did.

Usually if doing something iffy I tend to spin up a virtual machine using VirtualBox and have it run in the sandbox there, hoping it can't escape it.

That said, I should look into getting a VM setup properly with an offline XP for my old games. Many of my DVD/CD based games won't run on Win10 due to them insisting on installing drivers as copy protection, something Microsoft decided to shut down because of the same method being used for exploiting the system.

Also, for the discussion of Anti-Virus. Make sure your anti-virus is of a new enough version and that you have indeed had the Windows patch to mitigate Meltdown installed. Due to Anti-Viruses causing instability once kernel data was now separated from user-data, Microsoft has made it so the patch (or further windows updates it seems) will not install until the Anti-Virus has set a registry key stating it should be compatible.
Meaning with outdated Anti-virus software, it might be preventing your computer from getting security updates.

Yes, that can be a problem, if you need updates...

My dad uses Norton and though it does some things right and others well enough, it is super annoying in other ways like not updating the program itself unless you are logged into an admin account... which one should like never be. Also, the default setting was to wait for twenty minutes after startup before checking for updates... HELLOOOO!!!! Not good for someone who usually uses the computer only ten or fifteen minutes at a time and sure enough it got totally bogged down with malware. I reinstalled Windows and installed uBlock Origin and changed Norton to check much sooner after updates. Still the problem remains with the program not updating itself unless I visit and do it for my parents.

I am also using Avast free and also have become more and more dissatisfied with it of late so this thread interests me a lot.

Is this from experience? The description seems to say that it does.
https://usa.kaspersky.com/free-antivirus

Anyway, thanks for all the input. I think I'll go with free BitDefender for now and see how well it goes. If it turns out not satisfactory I'll switch to something else.

Can I ask you what Avast version do you use? Maybe you should install just shields?
I've never experienced your problems with Avast.

Do anyone else use your PC or just you? Because if it's just you and you know your way around the internetz and whatever devices are being plugged on your PC, then my recommendation is to not use any antivirus at all. Not even Windows Defender.

I'd recommend something like Glasswire to monitor and allow/block incoming/outgoing connections and that's it.

For me, with no AV installed, if firewall is just monitoring incoming/outgoing connections then that is not enough. You need something more like firewall with HIPS to be more secure, like Jetico Personal Firewall.