![]() ![]() Quite often its (false positive) ‘block’ actions occurred without any sort of notification or visible record at all, so quite often a new or updated program would persistently fail to run, with no explanation visible anywhere. Other AVs give really helpful alert dialogs that allow instant allow / block choices, so why not Defender too? A whole lot of hassle that I could do without. Sometimes it did say, but then I had to go to Exclusions to whitelist it. If I got a notification that something was detected, blocked or quarantined, I had to drill down from the Settings > Updates and Security menus to find out what had been found, and often I couldn’t even find what the supposed ‘threat’ was. When it ‘detected’ or blocked anything (inevitably all false positives), its notifications ALL gave no dialog for allowing / blocking. It slowed down all program launches and, I think, more or less all file accesses, and it was a great relief to have it turned off once more. It may indeed be pretty good for detection, BUT in practical terms I found it to be rather a nightmare. I gave up using Windows Defender (i.e., in realtime mode), and honestly cannot recommend it to anyone. I use Windows Firewall Control as my front-end for the Windows Firewall, as it gives me much more control than GW over managing rules and applying other security features of the WF - so, for me GW is specifically an extremely valuable monitoring program rather than a firewall (front end). I have a lifetime subscription for Malwarebytes Premium, and try it once in a while, but in realtime mode it (still) slows the system far too much and so is kept just for periodic on-demand scans, so am currently running Zemana Antimalware Premium in realtime mode, though, bearing in mind the extended functionality and good reputation of Windows Defender nowadays, ZAM is probably redundant on my system, but at least it gives minimal performance impact I may well not renew my 3-year subscription for it, for the price is much higher nowadays - but would still use the free version (if there is one by then) for periodic on-demand scans. This is useful if you’re the kind of person who dumps everything on the desktop in the vague hope of sorting it all out at a future date.I use SecureAPlus, with its offline AV (ClamAV) turned off and Windows Defender enabled. Clicking this while on the desktop lets you automatically tidy away files into a single folder. Right clicking also gives you access to something called OrganiZen. ![]() Right clicking a file allows you to scan it for threats. If you’re into finding the very best deal, this may be for you, but as it can only suggest you deals from service partners rather than the whole web, you may also want to shop around yourself. The Avira Safe Shopping module works by scanning what you’re browsing on web sites and suggesting cheaper deals from partner vendors. Having your browser modified in this way is a little unnerving, and I’ve had bad experiences of having to manually change settings back after uninstalling similar products, but clicking Remove in Firefox restored my previous settings perfectly. ![]() Opening a new tab also redirects you to this search page. Install the Safe Search Plus module, and you’ll be redirected to Avira’s search page, where results are filtered to remove known harmful sites. Set a master password and enter it whenever you need to log into any of the protected sites. Enter a username and password to log into a site and it will offer to store the details for you in future. The bundled password manager is also the full version, and is exactly what you’d expect. This includes the usual suspects such as browser cookies, but also looks for application usage statistics and chat logs. It scans your system for digital traces that can be used to track or profile you. ![]() The Privacy Pal module doesn’t suffer from the “Pro upgrade” problem. We’ve got a round up of theīest VPN services here, and some of those are cheaper options that you might prefer to subscribe to instead. Connections are established quite quickly, and connecting to the New York server allowed me to access Netflix US content. Here, too, there’s an opportunity to upgrade to the Pro version, which costs £6.99 ($8.99) per month or £4.33 ($5.49) month if you take out a 12 month contract. The in-built Phantom VPN provides one-click online anonymity with a fairly generous 1GB data limit. ![]()
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