Ok, so I seem to see everywhere they you recommend to download and use malwarebytes as well as avast. Why is this? To me that makes it sound like malwarebytes is better lol. Or is it because we need a second opinion?
Welcome sp@rky13
As no anti virus application is 100% effective against the latest prolific malware purveyors so Malwarebytes (MBAM) is part of a Layered Defence system.
I use several layers:
- avast! anti virus
- HOSTS file managed by HostsMan to block known malware sites
- Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (MBAM) to block malware from installing
- Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) to block Microsoft known malware
- WinPatrol Security Monitor to monitor what the others miss
Not better; different.
Its resident protection you will pay for, though it’s not much.
Good second opinion demand scanner/cleaner. There are others.
Tell the truth, I haven’t had to use MBAM for very much, Avast covers the majority of it. But if I need it, it’s ready.
Well if you were to only use MBAM, you would have to purchase the pro version as it doesn’t have resident protection, it doesn’t monitor emails, P2P, IMs, the internet traffic, etc. etc. It is hugely different from avast, whilst I have the greatest respect for MBAM, there is no way I would use only that.
As has been said no single application is likely to provide 100% protection, so a multi-application approach to security enhances your overall protection. The main issue in the multi-application is to choose compatible/complimentary applications and not conflicting ones. e.g. never two resident anti-virus applications and the same for not having two resident anti-spy/malware applications.
See my sig for my own layered-defense setup – not necessarily recommended, but it works well for me. By far my primary resident protection is from avast, with the firewall as my only other thing that’s resident. I suppose you could also call Spyware Blaster “sort of resident”, since it works primarily through registry settings and therefore continuously protects even though not actually running.
I did also have for many years resident protection from Spyware Guard, but even Javacool agreed there’d be little or no harm in dumping it given my other protection, especially since it hasn’t been updated in years.
I’ve got the free versions of MBAM and SAS, and typically I’ll do on-demand scans with those and avast once a week, relying on avast’s resident protection for in between such scans.