On my trip back to the states, a few people asked me why I don’t use AVG Free antivirus software. Well, aside from the reasons I stated then (pop-ups, bugs, general clunkiness), AVG has changed their privacy policy and expressed their intent to sell the browsing and search history of their users to advertisers. Tsk, tsk. Of course, if you are reading this on Facebook (my blog auto-publishes to my FB wall), similar data of yours has been sold already.
The truth is, free antivirus programs are not free at all, and most are complete shit.
My choice of antivirus software? I do not always recommend my personal choice because it’s a bit esoteric, but it’s 360 Total Security with the optional Bitdefender and Avira AntiVir engines enabled.
I don’t even bother running AV on most of my machines because they’re already locked down in other ways. A lot of the AV programs make themselves a Man-in-the-Middle for your whole system by filtering ‘everything’ you do through them. That’s way too much control for any 3rd party software.
Freeballing, eh? I download a lot and do catch the occasional truly positive virus. What other methods do you use?