re: #281 Floral Giraffe

June Consumer Reports rates free security software as Avira 65, AVG 60, Avast 57 Microsoft 55.

Consumer Reports reviews are helpful on durable goods, like appliances and cars, but I don’t trust them on anything related to computers, especially software of any kind. Frankly, I don’t have confidence that their writers and testers have the know-how to accurately compare something as important as AV software; AV-Comparatives and other groups do tests much more often than the once-in-a-blue-moon CR does an article on it (AV-Comparatives releases reports every few months or so).

According to AV-Comparatives’ last on-demand scanning report (from February), MSR scored in 11th out of 20 AV suites tested, with 95.8% of samples detected (slightly worse than McAfee, Kaspersky, and ESET [NOD32], but better than Symantec [Norton] and Trend Micro) and only 1 false detection recorded (only McAfee did better).

Here is that report for your perusal: