How many anti-virus programs should you use?

It seems to me that at some point a person has to exercise a little self-restraint and use some common sense. If four "extra" on-demand malware programs are of benefit, then why not twelve? fourteen? Seriously, where does it end? In the past I've used a single anti-virus program and a firewall. During that period of time (a few years' duration) I experienced no ill-effects to my computer. My accounts were not hacked, my browsing was not slowed down, I did not have my identity stolen. Then there was a period in which I added a couple of on-demand scanners (i.e. Malwarebytes and Spybot). Once again, my computer seemed fine and there were no problems. For the past two years I've employed a single security suite... period. Again... no issues. Currently I use a free security suite (F-Secure) provided by my ISP and a single on-demand scanner: Malwarebytes. And to date, everything is fine. Granted, I use my brain when I'm online and I'm careful which sites I navigate to as well as refusing to open attachments or click on links via my e-mail. It's my way and I'm comfortable with it. Hopefully you'll find something that provides peace of mind for you as well. Just don't go the overkill route and take what "all of us" say with a grain of salt. Good luck.

 

You are again going overboard.

Running MSE & Commodo Internet Security simultaneously is NOT recommended as it would slow down your system & would have compatibitlity problems as both are online scanners. Choose either of them

Ad-aware has become bloatware.

Again ,as already said, your choice.

Installing many free programs is not going to do anything to your security. Most of these programs shouldn't be allowed to autorun or won't autorun. You have to run them periodically. These may be used as 2nd defense in case your online antivirus scanner fails to pickup anything.

That's correct.

 

I completely agree with rsinfo. It's overkill and it's unwise. I'm not saying it's paranoia but going with this number of malware programs is unwarranted. As I said (facetiously) before... if you believe eight programs are going to keep you secure, then why not twelve or fourteen or eighteen? About all you will achieve of a questionable positive nature is that a few tracking cookies of low risk will be identified by some of these "other" programs but at what cost?

Have you been seriously infected in the past? Is this why you are "going overboard" as rsinfo has likened it? If not, then it seems to me that your best course of action would be to choose "ONE" antivirus/malware program (Microsoft Security Essentials will do just fine), one firewall (Windows firewall is quite adequate...yes... there are others with more bells and whistles but Windows firewall for Win7 is fine) and possibly one "on-demand" (i.e. does NOT run in the background) secondary malware program (i.e. Malwarebytes is fine)... period. More than that, in my opinion, is unnecessary and could compromise your system's performance.

 

Thanks for all the information. I'm glad I made this thread before I actually went ahead and installed everything. So now I'm thinking MSE for my antivirus with real time protection, I'll stick with the built-in firewall, use mBAM as my "on demand" antimalware program, and use Spyware Blaster for blocking bad stuff. Is that still overkill or does that work well? I don't think there would be any conflict with these right?

 

Looks ok to me.

 

I agree. You have a good line-up there.

btw... here's an interesting link to Microsoft which suggests using Malwarebytes in addition to its MSE: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-malware/ba80504b-61f1-4d71-960f-b561798b7b42

 

Hey thanks for the link. So they also mentioned Super Anti-Spyware. So I can add that to my lineup too?

Also, I've been looking around and I've read different articles and watched many videos that agree with what everyone here said. They advise using only one anti-virus (they say that you can have more but only one should have "real-time" protection ", but they still lean towards using only one good one) but they say it is more than acceptable to have more than one anti-spyware / anti-malware program.

Too much of a good thing isn't good. I guess I was going overboard before because it's hard for me to choose sometimes between different programs after hearing such great things about all of them.

 

You should be able to run several on-demand (non-realtime) malware scanners, although more than two is probably overkill & I wouldn't recommend it. I've used SUPERAntiSpyware for over three years & I once ran the freeware (which is on-demand only) MBAM with it as well. I eventually uninstalled MBAM for reasons I stated earlier, plus I had some updating issues with it. I believe these updating issues, which predominantly affected people who lived outside of the continental United States (I live in the UK), have been fixed now. Either way, many people run both programs & they are probably the best anti-malware scanners on the Net. There is no harm having a second opinion & it is a good way to check for potential false-positives. If both SAS & MBAM report the same thing it is more likely that the malware they have detected is real. Always check on the respective forums of the distributors before permanently removing (or even quarantining) any possible malware, excepting harmless tracking cookies of course. SUPERAntiSpyware also removes tracking (& flash) cookies which MBAM doesn't.

Personally, I wouldn't run more than one anti-virus program (realtime or otherwise), as you will inevitably have conflicts between them. I used to run Windows Defender as well with my previous AV, however MSE switches Defender off on installing as Microsoft deem it to be superfluous. I do miss some of its tools though.