keep in mind
This is our all-in-one roundup that examines every Malwarebytes consumer security solution for XNUMX. On this page, after our brief introduction, you will find
(a) a full review of the entry-level Malwarebytes Premium, like our reviews of the ancillary features built into the rest of the line:
(b) Malwarebytes Premium + Privacy, and
(c) At the end of the article is our review of the free tier, Malwarebytes Free
You can access the reviews of these individual products by clicking on the links in the bar at the top of this page.
Malwarebytes is a California-based company that has been developing malware-scanning products for over fifteen years.
It claims the latter line is smarter than traditional antivirus, thanks to layers of technology like anomaly detection, behavior matching, and application hardening.
However, there are no other essential security extras. No firewalls, parental controls, backups, or anything else: Malwarebytes is all about the basics, squashing malware and blocking access to malicious links.
You can test the basics of the product at any time with Malwarebytes Free. There's no URL blocking, no real-time threat detection, but on-demand scanning for malware, spyware, and rootkits could make it useful as a 'second' opinion scanner."
Malwarebytes Premium adds real-time protection, URL blocking, and an auxiliary layer of protection against ransomware. It's free for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, but most of the more powerful technologies (URL filtering, ransomware and zero-day protection, uninstall protection) are for Windows only.
It costs € 5 a year for a single device, a one-year license, or € XNUMX to cover XNUMX devices.
A Malwarebytes Premium + Privacy plan offers you protection against malware and an unlimited VPN powered by Mullvad, which also covers 5 devices, for an annual fee of € one hundred (no discount for a couple of years).
As an antivirus, it is expensive. Bitdefender Total Security has considerably more features; It covers Mac, Android and also iOS, like Windows, but it can still cover up to ten devices for € XNUMX the first year, € XNUMX when renewing.
Total Security does not have an unlimited VPN, but if that's essential, Avira Prime includes a VPN and a host of other features, and also covers 5 devices for € one hundred. Or if you have more hardware, a XNUMX-device license costs just € XNUMX and monthly billing means you can try it for just € XNUMX.
Malwarebytes Premium
Malwarebytes installs quickly and easily. We were offered the option of having a fourteen-day trial of Malwarebytes Premium, and while this requires sending an email address, there were no other inconveniences of any kind (we didn't even have to confirm our email).
Checking the Malwarebytes installation folders showed a partially light bundle with around four hundred MB of files and only a few large background processes.
It didn't seem like a lump that would slow it down, but the latest AV-Comparatives benchmark results suggested the opposite, putting Malwarebytes in a disappointing position of fourteen out of seventeen opponents.
Malware can try to disable your antivirus before trying to infect a system, so a good security application should be able to protect itself. We test this by launching our attacks: deleting files, closing processes, disabling services, etc. - and review whether our performance continues to be upright.
Malwarebytes got off to a good start, with their primary service rejecting all of our attempts to shut it down, remove it, or disable it.
But then we managed to download a Malwarebytes key filter monitor with a single command, suppressing its ability to inspect files as they are accessed.
This does not automatically mean that it is fragile in each and every situation. An attacker can only launch this type of attack if he is able to run malicious code on his system as an administrator; Malwarebytes should warn of the most dangerous files already before they can execute something, and if something is missing, it should not have administrator rights.
Even if the malware manages to overcome these obstacles, there is still the possibility that Malwarebytes could block it at the behavioral level.
Even so, this is a clunky security flaw that we rarely see with the best antivirus apps, and it leaves us wondering if there might be other drawbacks we overlook.
Antivirus
If it's a "set and forget" type, there's not much you need to do after installation. Malwarebytes runs in the background and takes care of it right away, with nothing to do.
When you need to run an on-demand scan, it's as simple as double-clicking the Malwarebytes system tray icon, hitting the Browse button, and waiting for the results. Everything is very simple, and even less technical beginners will immediately feel at home.
Malwarebytes' primary scan feature quickly checks memory, startup items, and key areas of your filesystem. He made some wise choices in our test system, looking at enough areas to be useful, but not so many that we had to wait for the results, and he was done in seven minutes and twenty-five seconds. (If you're in a rush, a quick scan checked RAM and boot objects in just five seconds in our review system.)
Overall, scan times were found to be reasonable, with Malwarebytes testing our fifty GB of test executables in 25:18 minutes for the first scan, 21:18 for the second. It is similar to many other distributors, although some speed up subsequent scans by checking only new and changed files (Bitdefender Home Premium took fifty minutes in scan # 1, for example, but was reduced to fifty seconds in analysis # two).
Scan types
A separate custom scan lets you choose which items you want to check, including specific files and folders, and gives you a bit of control over how they work (whether to scan inside files and what to do about "potentially unwanted programs," for that matter). of an example.) That's a welcome touch, though it doesn't begin to match the high level of control you're going to see with more geek-friendly products from Avast, Avira, and others.
You can scan files, folders or drives from the Explorer menu accessed by right-clicking. Unfortunately, the Windows user cannot handle concurrent on-demand scans, so try this when you are running a regular scan and you will be told to wait. This is not a critical drawback: the Malwarebytes engine always and at all times warns of threats as they appear, even if there is another scan in progress, but it is a drawback that cannot be achieved with the best antivirus.
URL filtering
Malwarebytes also provides simple URL filtering, warning and blocking any attempts to access malicious links. It works at the network level, without the need for browser extensions, ensuring that your applications are protected.
The results were only average in our tests, but that's still enough to be useful, and it's a nice addition to the pack.
The Settings dialog is primarily concerned with enabling and disabling functions (updates, notifications, web filtering, malware protection, etc.), but you have detailed control over exploit protection. Malwarebytes, where bundles employ multiple techniques to guard against scratch. daily attacks for common applications and application types.
These options are so technical that even the most specialized users may have trouble knowing what to do with them. (Should you apply "Dynamic Anti-HeapSpraying Enforcement" to your browsers, for example? Fast now.) However, other alternatives are easier to understand ("Disable loading of VBScript libraries"), and this level control is enough to bring certain advantages. If you find that your PDF reader is not working properly after installing Malwarebytes, for example, disabling multiple operational features for PDF applications may provide a solution.
If you're waiting for a stack of bonus features, or extras in the least, then you're out of luck. Here there is no specialized bank protection, no password manager, none of the things that you could get with certain plans. This emphasis on fundamentals at the very least makes Malwarebytes simple to use, and if you don't need that kind of supplement, you may appreciate its simplicity and lack of bulk.
protection
Malwarebytes has never performed the best in common lab tests.
In AV-Comparatives' real-planet protection test from July to October, Malwarebytes ranked thirteen out of seventeen plaintiffs with a protection score of ninety-nine or six percent.
AV-Test was even less impressed, rating Malwarebytes five.5 / six for protection in its Windows Home user test of October 7. This put it XNUMXth out of XNUMX applications - only KXNUMX Security and eScan scored lower.
Malwarebytes has not subjected its software to SE-Labs user testing for some time. However, it appears in the Consumer Report for the first quarter of two thousand twenty-one, where it came in last place out of fifteen with a total protection rating of XNUMX% (Sophos, AVG, ESET and even Microsoft Proteger achieved a score of the hundred%).
It is not excellent. Okay, this is terrible. To try to check this out, maybe get more details, we tested Malwarebytes on our own.
The first involved test applications that exploited common Windows tools to create processes, download malicious files, and often behave suspiciously. Malwarebytes ignored the behavior and also, initially, the files. Nonetheless, it blocked all of them at launch, keeping us safe.
It is a good end result, but others are more cautious. High-performance Trend Micro noticed the suspicious actions of our test application and shut down its processes before they could download anything. Kaspersky and Bitdefender noticed certain of the behaviors and, if they missed something, they noticed the malicious files when they were downloaded (without waiting for them to run).
As the second most dangerous test, we faced Malwarebytes with a simple ransomware simulator of our own making. Since the engine would never have seen this before, we would see if its behavior monitoring itself could detect the threat.
The results were not good, Malwarebytes did nothing in the least as our simulator was encrypting thousands of test documents.
Other dealers score significantly higher on this test. Trend Micro, Kaspersky and Bitdefender not only...