If you’re looking for software to secure your computer, there’s plenty to choose from. Any antivirus software maker will tell you that their software is the best. The promises all sound nice, but is it all true?
Anti-virus software makers may not tell you everything after all. What exactly their software does on your computer, for example.
Are Windows 10 and Windows 11 properly secured?
Windows 10 and 11 are more secure than you might expect. Because Windows 10, and also Windows 11, has its own virus scanner on board. The virus scanner is called Windows Defender. It is a virus scanner that does well according to the leading computer security labs SE Labs and AV Test.
So good, in fact, that you don’t need separate antivirus software on your computer. You may be surprised
Why computer security software can’t really deliver on its promise
Because you can read extensively in many magazines, and also on the Internet, about the latest antivirus software and the latest functionalities in that field.
And they all promise to protect you much better from outside dangers that was the case until then.
Yet there are those who doubt it. Rob Braxman for example. He is an internet security specialist and the man who calls himself ‘the internet privacy man’. On his YouTube channel, he explains exactly why he thinks most antivirus software is more of a threat to your privacy and also to protection against outside threats.
Video – Rob Braxman
And if what he claims is true, then as a computer user with no real knowledge of computer security you are quickly at the mercy of the gods in this area.
But luckily, if you have Windows 10 or Windows 11, you can protect your privacy and your computer very easily without any third-party antivirus software. So completely free.
In short, today every anti-virus software maker claims that its software also protects your computer against unknown threats. But actually, antivirus software can’t do that at all.
Antivirus software still works on the basis of a database that stores a specific virus or other threat. To this day, this means that a virus scanner is still unable to recognize an as-yet-unknown threat.
This means that, for example, a virus, packaged in a file that does not behave suspiciously according to the virus scanner, can still pass through a virus scanner undetected.
In order to get as close as possible to that promise, antivirus software scans everything that wants to access your computer from the Internet. From the web pages you view to the emails you receive, everything is scanned by the antivirus software on your computer.
This means that even everything you receive on your computer via a secure connection, and where data is sent encrypted, is still readable by the antivirus software.
If an antivirus software maker wanted to do any harm, he could collect all kinds of sensitive data about you this way. And if the anti-virus software maker can do that, then so can a hacker who manages to manipulate the anti-virus software.
At least as big a threat, but in this case to the security of your computer is that all antivirus software works at the so-called system level. Which means that the software can make changes to system files of the computer. Logical really, because it is the only way to nullify any attack on Windows.
This also means that if a hacker manages to successfully eliminate or circumvent the virus scanner with a trick, the hacker also has system-level access to your computer and can do whatever he wants on your computer. And that without you ever noticing.
As you can imagine, when antivirus software is working so hard on your computer, it can never have a beneficial impact on your computer’s performance. And so it is. You will notice this especially if your PC is not very fast.
The only antivirus software that differs is Windows Defender, which is supposedly part of Windows 10 and 11. Windows Defender still works the way antivirus software used to work. As a result, Defender is excellent at recognizing viruses and malware that already exist. In addition, Windows Defender will be more difficult to manipulate because it is actually part of Windows.
All in all, it’s not an uplifting story for us computer users. However, this problem is relatively easy and quick to solve.
How to easily turn your Windows PC into an impregnable fortress
The main reason why you don’t need to install a virus scanner on a PC equipped with Linux, or with a Linux-based operating system, is because by default, as a user of the PC, you do not have access to the computer at the system level.
For example, if you want to install an app on a Linux PC, you have to log in separately with a user account that has system administrator rights.
This is not the case by default with Windows. When you create a user account while installing Windows, or when starting up a new PC, it is of the Administrators type by default. Which means you can do everything on your PC, including at the system level.
But did you know that on a Windows PC you can do something really easy, turning your PC into an almost as impregnable fortress as a Linux PC?
You therefore optimally protect your computer by:
Remove antivirus software that you have installed separately on your Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer. You can remove apps, such as antivirus software, from your computer in Settings , Apps , Apps & Features.
As soon as you restart your PC after removing the antivirus software, Windows Defender will automatically start protecting your PC against viruses and other malware.
Next, you are supposed to create a new user account with limited rights on your computer. To do this, click on Start and then Settings . Then click on the Accounts section.
In the Accounts section, click on the Family and other users option , in Windows 10 in the left column.
In Family & other users , click the Add someone else to this PC option.
Choosing to log in with a Microsoft account is useful if you use OneDrive and other Microsoft services. If you don’t use it, it’s better to just create a local user account. You do this by clicking on: I do not have this person’s login details.
In the next window, click on the link: Add a user without a Microsoft Account.
The Create a user for this PC window now opens. Enter a username for your new local account and a password here. Then fill in the answers to the security questions.
Then, when you click the Next button, the new user account is created and immediately displayed in the Family and other users window.
If you click on the new account and then click on the Change Account Type button , you will see that the new user account is of the Standard User type.
The Standard User account type does not have access to the computer at the system level. That means that when you use your new account for everything you normally do on your computer, nothing can happen to you.
Because if you don’t have system-level access on your computer, nothing has that. For this reason, you must first log in with your Administrator account (your old account) before you can install an app, for example.
But it also means that if you accidentally clicked on something you shouldn’t have, nothing could ever just be installed on your PC. Because again, if you don’t have system-level access yourself, nothing has. And so nothing can be installed on your PC unnoticed.
Using a Standard User account , in combination with Windows Defender, is therefore the smartest thing to do if you want to optimally protect your Windows 10 PC or your Windows 11 PC against hackers and other external threats.
