I use ESET and it's very good.

It's still pretty much the same. They mostly target Windows malware for several reasons. For one, people use Win apps through Wine and they can be infected, though damage is nowhere near serious as would be the case otherwise, some users still like to play it completely safe. On the other side, if you're generally a nice Linux fella and your box accomodates a large traffic of Win executables, attachments etc. which might not compromise it but would do so with your friends' and colleagues' on Windows, you might opt to be their first line of defense, as you also noted.

That being said, number of known malware threats targeting Linux specifically is not much higher than the number of years it has been in existence, turned 24 just recently. Substantial portion of those aim at servers and, especially in the last few years, large-scale systems while the risk of being infected by them is usually invalidated with security patches. If you're interested, this article picks a few of them illustrating A brief history of Linux malware.

If you're a Linux user, you might find Rootkit Hunter and chkrootkit more relevant.

Apparently AVG is selling the browsing and search history of its users:
https://np.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3l4apg/avg_anti_virus_just_updated_there_privacy_policy/
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-09/17/avg-privacy-policy-browser-search-data

The Reddit page links to an op-out should one want to keep using the software.

After using BitDefender since 2004, but (bar some quick tests of 2012, 2013 and this year also 2015 that I just as quickly gave up on as unusable) staying on the 2011 version until January this year, though support for it had ended in January 2014 (still received definitions updates, but not fixes and such), I've actually spent this year testing various products, to find one to switch to that will ideally be at least as secure as BitDefender, but also allowing the user more control and ability to monitor (also the system in general through it, not only the AV itself), so the opposite of their direction. Tested basic antivirus versions paired with Comodo Firewall, which I tried first and found to be great, so can't tell you anything about suites.

Based on my experience through these tests, Kaspersky and Emsisoft currently seem the top choices, but those tests were on the previous versions, will probably try the latest ones too before making a final decision. AVG (full version, don't know about the free) seems a relatively safe 3rd place. Others tested (G-DATA, McAfee, Trend Micro and currently Avira) fall under no go. G-DATA seems powerful, but experienced some issues with it and its proxy service pretty much overrides Comodo so they don't play nice together; McAfee was generally a mess; Trend Micro seems decent and lightweight on continued use (but with a significant impact on starting applications) but hardly offers any options so no way for me, while now with Avira I can probably quite safely say that, differing from what the people commenting here said, it's been the worst experience yet.

I vouch for Bitdefender Antivirus Free.

Fock Windows Defender.

Dog fu*k sh*t Avira. And everything else.

Both commercial and free (consumer) antivirus are mostly disgusting caca, these days. I've tried them all. Repeatedly. To write magazine articles and all. They're caca. They just want to turn your data and your digital life into profit. It's not conspiracy, it's not a theory, it's just the way the business has turned out.

You responded to a thread that had been laid to rest over 3000 days ago, and was only revived by a GPT spambot that managed to find it.

...fuck.