Free virus scanners are a false sense of security after my system got wrecked

I thought I was being smart by using Avast free antivirus for years. Never paid a dime for security. Then last month I got hit with ransomware that locked up all my project estimates and job photos. Avast didn't catch it at all. The popup told me to pay $500 in Bitcoin or lose everything. I wiped the drive and lost 2 weeks of work because I had no backups either. Learned the hard way that free tools don't give you real protection against targeted attacks. Now I pay $60 a year for a proper suite and run manual backups to an external drive every Friday. Has anyone else had a free antivirus completely fail them when it mattered most?

2 comments

2 Comments

wyattrobinson1mo ago

Used to think free antivirus was good enough and anyone paying for it was getting scammed. Then my wife's laptop got hit with a crypto locker that got past everything free we had on there. Wiped out years of family photos she hadn't backed up because we thought the cloud was automatic. Had to pay a recovery service $300 to get maybe half of them back. So yeah, I definitely changed my mind on that one.

hayden_butler271mo ago

Gotta disagree, a good backup plan matters way more than paid antivirus.