The internet is a type of mind game that we all play at some point. However, we never know which move of ours might lead to our defeat. The kind of loss we face here includes our identity being stolen, the system getting infected, or files getting deleted or locked.
Apart from this, today, we have to be extra careful and watch out for our digital footprint.
The global organizations and government try their best to track everything we do, one of the standard methods they use to do this through a free antivirus.
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What is an antivirus?
An antivirus is a program designed as security software that enables you to keep your system safe and secure from malicious programs. These malicious activities can be in the form of malware, viruses, spyware, etc. Antivirus software both free and paid has features that eliminate these malicious programs from entering your system and detect them if they bypass the defense.
It is essential to keep your system protected from such programs.
Advantages of Using an Antivirus
- You are given primary prevention against any online threats. An antivirus program cannot eliminate the viruses, but it can reduce them to a great extent. Some protection is better than no protection at all. This software ensures that you have better security features.
- Antivirus enables you to remove malware and viruses from your system. It provides you with tools to drive the viruses out of your system.
But do you think all of these advantages come with no cost?
How Free-Antivirus Make Money from Your use
You get nothing for free in this world. Everything has its own cost. Services like these free antiviruses make money in a way you are not even aware of.
Although this is true that this software is free as they won’t charge you money, they make money in ways that we won’t be happy with. For example;
Tracking
Free antivirus software is designed to spy for non-government and government organizations. They have full access to your browsing history and activity, and this information is shared with anyone who wants to buy it.
You may think, why would anyone pay for accessing your browsing activity, then think about when insurance or healthcare companies send you offers linking with your current financial or medical condition. Today selling policies are not about salesmanship; it’s about your online activity.
Toolbars
This is the major problem associated with installing free antivirus software. Each software comes up with its set of toolbars that showers useless ads or link you with unnecessary web pages. Some of these pages are even malicious, and revenue is generated through these specific websites and pages.
There are more reasons why we should not use free antivirus software;
Ads
While using free antivirus software, you have to deal with several ads daily. If you want to get, something done on an urgent basis, an ad on your browser continually distracts and annoys you. The free antivirus shows us ads for services and software that we won’t even buy.
No Customer Support
Usually, there is no customer support given for free antivirus software. In case of some help, you have nowhere to go. When you use a trial version for any recognized antivirus, you don’t usually face such an issue.
Still, you won’t be given any customer support in case of a completely free version or any pirated version of well-known antivirus.Therefore in case of issues like failed updates, or if you have to access block apps or websites, you will have to figure it out on your own.
Free antivirus software can share your data with third-party servers or businesses. Be it your browsing history or data on your system, and both are at risk when using free antivirus software.
Information is an exceptional kind of currency in this digital era, and global companies make considerable efforts to access your data to sell you products that you may or may not need.
Hence the free antivirus software as well as anti malware like ByteFence is not only severely equipped to deal with threats you face, but also they have no clue what the latest threats are and what type of damage they possess. Therefore we can see why free antivirus software is such a significant problem.
