TIL that $80 antivirus subscription was basically a scam for my small business

Last fall I paid $80 for a yearly antivirus plan from some big name company thinking it would protect my work laptop for my landscaping biz. Turns out it slowed everything down so bad I couldn't even run my scheduling software without crashing, and it missed a phishing email that cost me $200 in fake invoice payments. Anybody else get burned by paying for security software that just made things worse?

3 comments

3 Comments

lewis.troy17d ago

Dang, I just read a piece the other day about how most paid antivirus is basically bloatware now. It was saying Windows Defender catches like 99% of the same stuff for free and doesn't slow down your machine at all. I feel like these companies make their money by scaring people into buying their software, then they just sit there eating up system resources and not actually protecting you from the real threats. The phishing thing is the real kicker too, since no antivirus is gonna stop a targeted fake invoice from getting through. You're better off just using the built in stuff and teaching yourself to spot those scam emails.

gracewebb17d ago

Wait, is that 99% number from a legit test or just something someone on Reddit made up? I've seen different numbers floating around depending on who's running the tests.

jana_fox509d ago

Oh yeah, definitely agree with all of that. I remember reading that same kind of comparison from AV-Test or AV-Comparatives (one of the legit testing labs) and Defender was consistently right up there with the paid ones. The thing nobody talks about is how those paid suites come with all this extra junk too like VPNs and password managers you didn't ask for. You end up paying for features you don't need while Defender does the job without all the baggage (and the annoying pop-ups to upgrade).