What antivirus/malware protection do you use?

I've used Trend Micro for years based off a recommendation from an IT friend years ago, but recently I got hit with a redirect virus and a couple of others. I apparently hit a bad site, not through looking at "questionable" sites, but in the progress of a marketing research paper, so I was quickly reminded to take a close look at google results before clicking a link.

Anyway, Trend Micro didn't catch the "infosmash" redirect which then got me Pilar and a couple of other rootkits. Took me a couple of days to figure out what happened, and fortunately I hadn't logged into anything other than school, so my other accounts appear to be safe. I downloaded malwayrebytes and TDSS killer to clean them, which they did and ran Eset online to double check and all appears to be clean now.

My Trend Micro subscribtion is up though, and I'm looking at other options. I looked at several reviews from various credible sites, and the only consensus seems to be that there isn't a consensus, although Bit Defender and Kaspersky seem to be conistant in the top 5 of most. That said, after 7+ years I trust the community here over most if not all other sources for reliable tech info, so I ask, what AV/Malware protection would you recommend?

Long story short:
If you ask this question of a large enough group of skilled professionals with relevant experience, you will get at least one "this is the best" and at least one "never use this" for every major product.

I think that a recent update actually got Norton off many peoples' "never ever" list, although I'm sure it's still on many.

Also, if you have a system where it is available, Microsoft Security Essentials is probably worth having; it appears to be the output of a small and exclusive team of MS developers who have heard of security and know that it is not a kind of flightless bird.

Oh, and also:

Be sure your main account is not running with admin privileges, and set things up correctly so that they don't need admin privs. You can't prevent the ncsoft launcher from telling you that you will need to accept "NCAccess", but the fact is, you don't need to if you've set the rest of your system up to allow the launcher to maintain games. In fact, you can replace ncaccess with a do-nothing program and everything continues to run just fine. (Again, *if* correctly configured for this.)

I also agree with MSE. That's what I run at home too. Its lighter on the system than all those other AVs most of the time you don't even know its there. Also for those of you upgrading to windows 8 its going to be built in so no need for another AV. Its getting rebranded as windows defender that windows 7/vista already has instead of having to download MSE separate.

Wouldn't touch any "bundled with" products as far as I could spit a rat. That includes Windows Defender, MSE and Windows Firewall.

Free version of AVG is what I have used for years and continues to be top of the pops in internet reviews by Joe Public and Joe Pro alike. Ironically the free version which JUST acts as Anti Virus is vastly superior to the full "Security Suite" paid for product, and the free versions only real minor annoyance is that it will do its best to get you to upgrade to the pro version when you're first downloading it / installing it. Once that's complete though it'll just sit there in the system tray minding its own business.

I would also agree that any of the big name boxed products like Norton and McAfee should be steered well clear of. On a wider note, in my experience any good, successful product that is procured by Symantec generally ends up being completely ruined by them within a few years.

For antiviral, I use Kaspersky both at home and at my office and have been pleased with them and their results for several years. Kaspersky is a subscription, but for me the investment is absolutely worth it. For anti-malware, nothing hangs with MalwareByte's Anti-Malware program. It's free, it's comprehensive and it's awesome. It is slow but amazingly thorough.

I used to despise Norton's antiviral programs, but its most recent offering is absolutely an improvement, as an earlier poster has already noted. Same for MSE. Also, Maximum PC had their annual antiviral/security programs review recently, and they've always given good advice for me. You should be able to check their website out and find the write-up.

I use MSE.

I use the linux machine to test out websites first.

Avast (for windows systems), not only is it one of the best, but it is free to home users. I clean up viruses for a hobby/side job, and most of the time when people have kasperky, or mcafee or nortons (and many of the others) they also have viruses. (of course people only bring me systems that have problems too, but many of them used those, or that one with the panda...

The real key issue is to make sure that your virus program isn't trying to do other things too, use a separate program for firewall and for spyware (I use Zone Alarm and SpyBot:Search and Destroy, all have free versions, the same can be said for these programs too, ignore the versions that try to do too much) When a program tries to do too much, it tends not to do anything well, look at nortons, it will bog down your system from running so much but still never really helps with much of anything. I have family who love Norton's (I think because it is 'fancy looking' or because they think because they pay so much for it it has to be good, and getting the free one means they paid for nothing, and they can't admit that) but they are always infected, in part because they also insist on using IE, no matter how many times I tell them they are asking for trouble using it. They are intentionally making their lives more difficult. /shrugs. What can you do, you know what they say about horses and water...

And yes, the ones that come with windows are even worse, completely useless.

GL

I roll with Avast, Malwarebytes & Spybot.

I got MSE on three systems now with Malwarebytes. It's great and much better than Norton. And not much a system footprint like Norton which tried to highjack everything in my system before a rebuild.

After trying out several antiviruses over the years, starting with Norton (ew), and going to AVG, AntiVir and MSE, I've settled on Malwarebytes. Reason being; with those other antiviruses, I've always ended up downloading the free version of Malwarebytes on my mom's and sister's computers and it's always caught viruses that the others missed, so I ended up spending the cash for the full version to get the active protection.

Well the free version of Malwarebytes isn't an actively scanning AV but batch only. Now I also batch scan with Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware besides using Avira's AntiVir as an active and batch scanner.

I have found that MSE is good for a free AV and when all the major computer website and magazines says it works well I m going to use it.
And it found stuff that Norton has missed.

AntiVirus --> Avast (free)
I'm a huge fan of Avast. I've been using it for years. I especially like the "boot time scan" feature. I have been using MSE for about a year now on one of my computers. I have heard many good things about it.

Firewall --> ZoneAlarm (free)
I find having a software firewall (in addition to having a hardware firewall) is useful in monitoring *outgoing* traffic.

Malware --> MBAM (free)
MalwareBytes Anti-Malware

Web Browser --> Opera/Chromium/Firefox
I mention web browsers because threats like "Drive-By Downloads". Having a browser that blocks scripts is really useful. As far as I know, all browsers will allow you to totally disable scripting. A much nicer solution IMO is using browser add-ons like NoScript (Firefox) and NotScript (Chromium/Chrome).

Also, here is a link to a guide I have found useful.

I use the free ClamAV on both my Mac and on my Windows 7 laptop.

I run PSafe from www.psafe.com which, if you know Spanish or Portuguese, is pretty easy to figure out. It's the newer implementation of Qihoo / 360's cloud-based AV engine that is the leading AV in China. It's super light and most of the heavy lifting is done by their servers: the engine is not kept on your PC and therefore not available for hackers etc. to examine, which counts for something. And it's 100% free

There is somethink like NoScript, just not as comprehensive. And it's a bit of a pain to use.