It's Time to Reconsider Anti-Virus (is it necessary?)

Short answer no. End user workstation 3rd party Anti-Virus is not necessary. With the recent FTC fine to Avast for $16.5 million for selling customer data they said they would protect, I decided to use this as an excuse to talk about free and paid 3rd party AV. It's not necessary for everyday users. Maybe a second opinion is good to have. But is it worth the trade-offs of privacy, system performance degradation, and annoying settings? Probably not. The default …

avast customer customer data data end end user free ftc paid party protect selling virus workstation