WHY YOU CAN STOP PAYING FOR ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

You don’t need to pay for antivirus software anymore. Microsoft’s Windows Defender, a free service that’s built right into Windows 10, is now as good as the paid antivirus/antimalware solutions that have been collecting your money for years. There, we said it.

Many PC users became accustomed to paying for antivirus software for two reasons: Good, free alternatives were scarce, and Microsoft offered minimal protection via Windows, ceding the category to Norton, Kaspersky, and a host of other third-party vendors. Windows’ first antimalware efforts were so abysmal that testing agencies like AV-comparatives.org and AV-test.org used Defender as the baseline (i.e., junk) level of performance. In December 2013, for example, AV-test.org tested how well 23 antivirus vendors blocked real-world malware samples using Windows 8.1. Microsoft finished dead last.