I ocassionaly scan my PC with malwarebytes, i wonder, does it save any of your personal data files, such as documents, notes, pictures, videos, etc. ? I already read trough the their page about data collection, and apparently they do not, only other data which is required, but im just asking to be sure, because i may have missed something. Also, what about antiviruses like AVG, or others? I used those a while back and i have heard those do scan and potentially (i suppose you cant really check) save your files to their server / database?
Used to be this was required software on windows. But that was a decade ago. You don’t need to run malwarebytes anymore.
Iirc avg, mcaffee, avast should be avoided like the plague. They constantly bombard you with “pay us for x feature” and collect sensitive information.
Malwarebytes are among the more trustworthy antimalware alternatives.
Avoid:
AVG, AVAST, Trellix/McAfee, Norton, in general all AV-software that offers a “complete protection” with VPN, Safe browsing etc.
Difficult:
You could create a bootable USB with varius antivirus software on.
Dissconnect your network cable, boot from USB and scan your harddrives from that.
That should block any data being sent.
Best and easiest
ClamWin is FOSS, does not do real time scanning (wich is a good thing) and can be used as an extra scanner.
Spybot is great software and can be extended to do virus scanning (I think they use Bitdefender defenitions) if you subscribe.
Spybot
https://www.safer-networking.org/compare-spybot-editions/
ClamWin
https://clamwin.com
Avast is better than malwarebytes
It’s useful in detecting a) binaries that haven’t been identified in the weekly security update (rare, but possible) and b) determining binaries that are causing issues with Windows AV.
I used it to figure out if I accidentally loaded a corrupted file trying to play a 20 year old game. It turns out the game just uses sys32 and has essentially root access with admin privileges, so Windows AV blocks it… Malwarebytes isolated the exe and let me know what was happening (after I uploaded to EFF and got the all clear)
It still has its uses, but it’s not nearly as important as it was a decade ago
can microsoft even see those files such as photo’s etc? and do they have them saved? i dont have dont have onedrive on.
where can i read more about this i cant seem to find any info on this topic