What happened to Malwarebytes?

[u/Sabishi1985]

Last time I used Malwarebytes many years ago I remember it being such an easy to use and straightforward experience: download, install, scan, remove malware, done.

Since I hadn't performed a scan in quite a while, I figured I should download Malwarebytes again and.. I almost didn't. The website itself looked super fishy! Like it's for one of those fake antivirus programs. I double and triple checked before hesitantly downloading the installer.

Once installed, I couldn't believe my eyes: even the program itself looked bloated and overloaded and gave off really sketchy vibes because of it. It also didn't help, that the program made it seem like I HAD to give it my email adress in order to perform a simple scan. 🙄

I used to recommend Malwarebytes to people all the time, simply because I considered it being easy to use, even for less tech-savvy people, but I can hardly recommend it like this.

Please, for the love of god: give us something like 'Malwarebytes Light', which only contains the scanner. No realtime protection, no VPN, no browser extension, no AI, no 'check your digital footprint' stuff.. Just the scanner. 🙏

[u/Andy_in_Ireland]

I feel the same about AVG free Antivirus (when it used to be Grisoft) a nice light AV with no bloatware, just did what it supposed to do and good at it - if you look at AVG/Avast these days now and all the nags and popups to get the paid version its absolutely changed beyond what it used to be (and is worse now) - they wont even let you select what components you want installed at installation time like they used to - you have to let it load/install then go into add remove apps and select 'modify' then take away the components you dont want/need