@elduvelle@jon Much "anti-virus" software is itself a virus, even if it's not as malicious as in this case.
The best protection applies to all platforms — use websites instead of installing apps whenever possible, apply the latest security updates, sandbox apps when you can, install software only from trusted sources, uninstall software you don't use, etc etc.
In Windows, you can use the free "Windows Security" (formerly the "Windows Defender" app); it does a good job without the performance hit you get from the $$$ products, and without introducing new spyware onto your machine (Microsoft already has access, for better or worse).
@david_megginson@elduvelle seconding this, Windows' built-in anti-malware tool is already there and seems to work decently. It's what I use on the Windows portion of my Win/Linux dualboot.
If you don't already, another useful idea would be to install adblockers (i.e. uBlock origin) on all browsers you have. Makes for a much quieter browsing experience and reduces your attack surface a bit, as advertisements can be used as malware vectors (see here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising ).
@brume@jon in my case, I have tried linux (ubuntu and some other distribution that I forgot the name of) and hated it. It is not intuitive and I had to spend hours looking online how to do every little thing. Opening a text file.. taking a screenshot.. setting the right permissions for my hard drive… accessing the task manager, etc. Doing something that takes me 5 min in windows was taking me hours on Linux. Now I’ve just given up.
I might come back to it one day because I really like the idea but I just wish there was at least one version of Linux that just mimicked windows without the bad aspects of it so users could switch at no efficiency cost.
I can relate to your experience, but it would be the same if you would use Linux now and try Windows. There's always some work required switching habbits/known tools.
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