Thoughts on AVs?

Curious

Hello,

I want to ask what is a sentiment about AVs in the community?
What are your thoughts on on brands like Bitwarden, Eset etc.?

I found that they have some interesting feature like "Browser Privacy & Security" feature with extention for supported browsers like Brave also and what it does basiclly prevent from accessing sites with bad reputation etc. and also it should encrypt your keystrokes and communication between your device and browser so keyloggers should not sniff on your stuff, as well as protecting cliboard and blocking printscreen originating from other processes.

I mean I am not really sure but... on one hand this is really interesting and could be handy, but on the other hand it seems like privacy concern.

Your thoughts on it?

https://help.eset.com/essp/17/en-US/idh_config_opp.html

Xtreix

Curious This should answer your question : https://privsec.dev/posts/knowledge/badness-enumeration/#antiviruses

If you use Windows 10/11, since you cannot uninstalled Microsoft's built-in antivirus (Microsoft Defender) only use that one and nothing else.

You can enable sandboxing for Microsoft Defender Antivirus by following this guide : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2018/10/26/windows-defender-antivirus-can-now-run-in-a-sandbox/

Please note that the security architecture of desktop is significantly lacking.

Curious

Xtreix Yes I am aware of MS Defender additional options even Attack Surface Reduction and tweaks in GP but what is my main concern is not that one would download malicious file, click malicious link, open sus attachemen of an email, but... mostly Browsing, yes the main defense is user ofc, but the problem is that today even a legit site can be infected or manipulated to redirect to malicious, have some drive by download magic etc.

I am not sure how much it is valid, but I saw many test runs of this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/@pcsecuritychannel/videos

He constatnly proves that MS Defender is not bad but it still lacks, I do not know what is his background exactly but people stated that he was/is a profesional in the field.

Also, I am not sure how much you can f-up MS defender and all when you tweak Win 11 with limiting telemetry as much as possible and also cutting down services and apps that are running and are installed by default, also removing some other thing like copilot, recall etc. Basicly slimming down the OS.

Also I know that MS Defender has SmartScreen feature which helps with web reputation etc. basicly that I was talking about above but... it works only in Edge and Edge is well... lets not talk about it. The integration with other browsers like Brave is not there.
Btw about Windows Sandbox, cool feature but:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O20WhmCspqo

So... very interesting :)

stripey

Curious
For Windows, ESET has proven reliable to me over the decades. ESET's 'Internet Security' tier is useful, AV itself is NOD32 but comes with a very decent firewall using the policy-based filtering mode, and network attack protection (IDS). I disable all of the 'security tools' features - AV has been solid for me over the years.

For GrapheneOS, I do not see a need to use ESET's Mobile Security for Android.

Curious

Thank you for info, can be locked.