Is Malwarebytes good and safe or is it risky?

[CarolineForbs]

Hello everyone,,

Ast antivirus I had was avast which was horrible I hated that program. I'm a bit sktechy on getting protection software I just get paranoid it might make my PC slower or give it malware or something. So I wanted to know if it was a good program and if so do you use it? Thanks..

[Malwarebytes]

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[RoVibes]

2 hours ago, CarolineForbs said:

Hello everyone,,

Ast antivirus I had was avast which was horrible I hated that program. I'm a bit sktechy on getting protection software I just get paranoid it might make my PC slower or give it malware or something. So I wanted to know if it was a good program and if so do you use it? Thanks..

Hi, I've been using Malwarebytes for a long time and It has helped me a lot of times. The first time that I found the program I had an annoying "Webengine" process in the task manager that was taking up almost all of my laptop's recources.It appeared that it was Malware. I tried some antivirus software to remove that malware. Finally I found Malwarebytes and gave it a try. It worked like a charm and removed the malware from my computer. Since than I am using it and I recommend it to friends and family.I wouldn't use any other protection software.For me its really the best anti-virus software. Keep in mind though that the best protection for a computer is really the person using it. Be mindful what links you click and what files you download.

[exile360]

Greetings,

Malwarebytes provides a free 14 day trial of the full featured Premium version when you install the free version so that you may try it out and see how the performance is.  It definitely does not contain any malware, and if it did other security vendors would be detecting it as a threat and it would certainly hurt the company's reputation, though you don't have to take my word for it of course and I encourage you to conduct your own research.  Malwarebytes does not bundle any PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs) such as toolbars or anything else as some vendors do and they never have (and they have adamantly refused to when companies have contacted them trying to pay them money to do so; I know this because I am a former Product Manager for Malwarebytes and worked for the company for around 7 years).

If you wish to seek the opinions of individuals less likely to be biased (as most of us who frequent this forum are bound to be, otherwise we wouldn't be here of course), you might consider checking their reputation on some more general security communities such as Wilders Security Forums, Bleeping Computer or a similarly reputable site/community that isn't specifically focused on Malwarebytes alone.  I encourage you to investigate independently and see what people have to say about Malwarebytes, and I'm confident you will find that most opinions about it are positive as it is one of the most frequently recommended malware remediation tools available and has been for several years now, not just on specialty security forums but throughout the web and the world (many PC repair techs also use it, as do many businesses, both large and small, for securing their networks and devices).  It's been recommended on Microsoft's forums, a very large number of dedicated malware removal help forums on the web, and it has even been recommended by employees of other AV companies to remove threats from their users' systems when their own tools had failed (one of the things Malwarebytes has been known for pretty much from the very start is its excellent remediation capabilities and excellent heuristics capable of detecting new/unknown threats missed by other products/tools).

It's a pretty light application compared to most of the AVs I've used, and it's built to be so since it is also compatible with many third party AVs and many users run it alongside the built in Windows Defender, however you may run Malwarebytes Premium alone if you wish, which would obviously be the lightest on resources.  You also have the option of using Malwarebytes Browser Guard which is an extension for Chrome and Firefox which blocks malicious sites, many ads, trackers and many other unwanted and potentially dangerous sites.  You can learn more here if you're interested and it's completely independent of Malwarebytes Premium so even if you don't end up choosing Malwarebytes Premium as your primary protection, you may still add Malwarebytes Browser Guard to your web browser to augment and help secure your browsing experience.

If you wish to learn more about the features and protections provided by Malwarebytes Premium, please review the information on this page and if you're curious about Malwarebytes' other offerings, you'll find them listed here.

I hope this helps, but again, I definitely encourage you to give the free 14 day trial a spin and to search the web and seek the opinions of any PC repair techs and/or knowledgeable PC enthusiasts and I'm confident that most if not all of the opinions you will hear will be positive.  None of that matters if the application doesn't suit your needs though, so regardless of what you decide to do, I recommend trying out any security app before making a purchase to ensure that it suits your needs and doesn't hurt your system's performance too much.

Edited July 11, 2020 by exile360

[Dan964]

As a long time user of Malwarebytes I can attest to its ability to root out stubborn infestations that other AVs could not. 

HOWEVER, I have 4 Windows machines, 2 win 8.1 and 2 Win 10. Three are running in a degraded MWB state due to incompatibilities with (I assume) Win OS.  There are what may be good reasons.  The 2 Win 8.1 machines are old and haven't had a clean install in years as I use Media Center, which MS no longer supports.  I do not want to go through a clean install and have to download Media Center from somewhere on the net and hope my licenses work.  The Win 10 machine is a Surface Go which even MS did not have sorted out at first. Ironically, the latest Windows update (2004) noticeably enhanced performance, especially waking from sleep/hibernation, but this seemed to induce some kind of race condition on waking which locked the box up tight.  The work around is to disable Ransomware Protection in MWB.

Finally, My Win 10 HP desktop runs MWB without issue.

My opinion is, for an antivirus to protect against sophisticated attacks it must be bolted into OS at the lowest levels possible to avoid being blocked by the attack itself.  This makes the antivirus vulnerable to instabilities caused by changes in the OS at these low levels.  The wide varieties of Windows platforms out there makes it very hard for 3rd party companies like MWB to keep abreast of all the idiosyncrasies that might result when these low level changes are made.  Like I said, even Microsoft's own Win 10 did not work well on my Surface Go originally and issues with Win 10 updates are notorious.

So my take is, if you have a mainline Win 10 machine, you should be fine.  If you build a custom gaming rig, you might run into issues with MWB similar to those you'd be addressing in getting all the pieces of your gaming rig working harmoniously.

Good luck,

Dan

[AdvancedSetup]

If you open a new topic in the Malware Removal forum and ask for me @Dan964 I'm sure we can clean up all the machines to a better working nature if you like and have the time.

Cheers