Windows Defender is the very basic protection you could have, in my opinion. I would never use only that.
There are a lot of good programs out there in the software world.
McAfee, Trend-Micro, Kapersky, Vipre, Norton, etc. All of them offer tech support.
Those are anti-virus programs, but I would also put malware protection on. I have Malware Bytes (the paid version). It runs in real time, to catch things before they enter. There are many malware bugs that slip right by antivirus programs.
My girlfriend and I were on the phone the last Thursday and she clicked on a link on Facebook(!!), and suddenly I heard this voice telling her that her computer had been hijacked and would not be released until she paid money!
She is not tech savvy at all, and she said "but what is this? It says it is from Microsoft?". I was urgently saying "no, no, no, shut your computer down. Shut down NOW!"
We waited 5 minutes before booting her back up again, and the hijack voice and "authentic looking" blue screen was gone. I had her download MalwareBytes and run the free scan.
Even though she had an antivirus program running whenever she was online, Malware Bytes scanned her computer and found 202 malware and virus junk. Over 200! It quarantined them, and I had her look through the details list for the malware that had seized her computer. I had Googled from my computer and found that malware is named "Crypto Hacker".
CryptoHacker is programed to slide right by antivirus programs. Some people literally end up having to pay the hackers to get their computers unlocked. I personally would never pay a hacker, I would spend the money to get to a computer specialist and use my money to have them use a removal tool to get it out, but people freak and pay the ransom.
She looked through all 200 trojans, rootkits, virus's and everything MalwareBytes found, and it did find the "CryptoHacker" and quarantined it.
I was so lucky to have been on the phone with her when it happened, I think she may have fell for it because of the "it looks like from Microsoft".
Not to mention the anti-malware program found 202 other things on her computer, even though her AV was running and scanning weekly.
There are people out there who have nothing better to do than mess other people computers and lives up. Can't have enough protection as far as I am concerned.
Also, if you get a separate AV program, it will make you shut down Windows Defender. You can't run 2 AV programs, but you can run anti-virus and anti-malware together.
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