Remove anti virus from my laptop?

Use hand sanitizer

Inject it with Bleach .

I have been fine with Defender for years. Had a phony McAfee pop up today. That has happened the odd time before also.

Celticman said:

I have spent a lot of time fixing my malware infected laptop. I had some great help from Google AI. During the process AI gave the following advice which surprised me. What are your thoughts on removing virus protection?

Most cybersecurity experts recommend completely uninstalling McAfee. Once removed, your built-in Windows Defender will automatically turn itself on.

Click to expand...

We use Bitdefender on all our devices includes phones. You can get large packages. We visit dodgy sites for movie streaming (not torrents), have an Android box for some free TV apps, and don't have issues. They will even stop spam calls.

Celticman said:

I have spent a lot of time fixing my malware infected laptop. I had some great help from Google AI. During the process AI gave the following advice which surprised me. What are your thoughts on removing virus protection?

Most cybersecurity experts recommend completely uninstalling McAfee. Once removed, your built-in Windows Defender will automatically turn itself on.

Click to expand...

If you EVER have any type of malware/virus on your device, the best practice isnt trying to get rid of the infection, its to properly format the drive (in some cases even using secure erasure tools because remnant data can persist and hide) 3rd party protection software is an entirely separate discussion but for the most part windows defender does an extraordinarily good job of protecting you, even when you're trying to circumvent it.

The best protection you have is common sense, don't run around downloading shit you don't need from bad sources if you don't know what you're doing. If you're gonna run around trying to be a pirate, learn to quarantine and scan files, or at the very least learn who the "reputable" distributors are and keep your important information on an entirely separate device that you keep clean.

I've used windows defenders now for years, before I had Norton, Eset, avast but Defender finds everything. I have to shut Defender when installing something thats cracked, it finds it right away.