What’s a free alternative to Norton antivirus?

Q

On your recommendation, I ditched Kaspersky for Norton 360, and I’ve been pleased with it. However, after every scan I see a warning page asking me to pay to remove junk on my PC. I have no intention of doing this, so can you recommend a free alternative? James Cairns

A

Norton 360’s ads are annoying, but you can turn them off. Open Norton 360 (click its icon in the system tray), select Settings, Administrative Settings, then scroll to the bottom of the list and change the Special Offer Notification setting to Off.

You could ditch Norton altogether and instead use Microsoft Defender. Although Defender doesn’t offer the same breadth of tools as paid-for security suites like Norton 360, as we revealed in Issue 629’s Cover Feature (see page 50) it does provide excellent protection from viruses. Defender comes installed with Windows 10 and 11, and will turn itself on as soon as you uninstall Norton (or any other security tool you’re using).

If you want extra protection, consider using Malwarebytes alongside Defender. The free version of Malwarebytes doesn’t include real-time scanning, but this is actually a good thing because it won’t conflict with Defender. Instead, you have to run scans manually (we run a scan each month just to make sure Defender hasn’t missed anything).

To run a scan, open Malwarebytes, then click the blue Scan button. Scans take just a few minutes (depending on the size of your hard drive) and, once finished, you’ll see a detailed report and the option to quarantine any suspicious files.

The free version includes a 14-day trial of Malwarebytes Premium. Because this Premium version includes realtime protection, it will take over from Defender as your computer’s antivirus tool. If you have no intention of buying the Premium version and would prefer to stick with Defender, open Malwarebytes, click the Settings cog, Account, then Deactivate (see screenshot). Malwarebytes will then revert to the free version.

The free version does include the occasional advert, but we think it’s worth putting up with these for the extra level of protection it provides.