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The "opinion-based" tag itself admits that many good questions willl generate some degree of opinion. Questions are to be there opinion-based only if answers will be based entirely on opinion, which doesn't apply to this question.

I simply wanted to know if Windows Defender is good enough to protect me from malware and viruses, which involves stating facts and is not completely opinion based although it does involve some opinion (many good questions do).

Do I need 3rd party anti-malware and anti-virus solutions on my Windows 10 PC?

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  • Some people believe that they can keep their hardware safe without a client level AV product. Others disagree, as a result this is opinion-based.
    – Burgi
    Commented May 14, 2018 at 9:33
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    That's not a tag, its a close reason.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented May 14, 2018 at 10:28

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It's opinion based because it depends entirely on your actions and computer use as well as a rather large amount of luck.

Imagine there are two people:

  • the first person frequents every pron, darkweb and script-kiddie website they can but they have script blockers and downloads everything they can get their hands on.
  • the second person visits only Forbes.com but has no ad-blocker nor antivirus

Which of these two (given that advertising malware is a thing) is more likely to get a malware infection?

The answer is we have no clue which is more likely and therefore cannot offer anything more than anecdotal evidence that "my grandfather was good and never visited bad sites but got a malware infection but my brother visits all the hives of villainy and has never caught a thing".

Almost all antivirus, like medicine in general, takes a risk-based approach to protection. They all have some level of permissiveness in how they protect you so that you can actually still use the computer.

Whether one is "good enough" for you depends entirely on what you are going to be doing and what other protections you might put in place.

  • do you keep full daily backups? If so then you might not care about antivirus at all, as all your data is safe.
  • do you browse "seedy" websites and interact with people who might want to steal your identity and data? If so you might was a full internet protection suite along with VPN and anonymised browser.
  • do you "just" check your email and visit TheSafestSiteOnTheInternet.com? Then Windows Defender might be fine.

We cannot say for certain because there are far too many opinions of what constitutes "safe" browsing, and we have no idea what you might do in the future.

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  • I understand --but ironically, your answer answers my question! And this answer (or a more elaborated one, since you only intended to provide short examples to answer this meta question) might just be what someone is looking for when he makes a Google search on whether or not he needs a third party solution. Is there a single solution for everyone? No. But does this answer provide helpful suggestions based on facts to someone who might be seeking help? Yes.
    – WorldGov
    Commented May 15, 2018 at 11:50
  • I still think that the question is valid, and more importantly, helpful to a lot of people. But I don't protest --one person doesn't make the superuser community, and I understand the community doesn't feel that this is a valid question. :)
    – WorldGov
    Commented May 15, 2018 at 11:52

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