AVG AntiVirus
Description
My first computer was a used Dell Inspiron that my older brother passed down to me in 2009. It came with nothing – no Office, no antivirus, no media player, just a bare Windows XP installation with the wallpaper still set to Bliss. I was fifteen. I knew two things about computers: Limewire was how you got music and viruses were how you lost everything. A kid in my class had his family computer wiped by something that he downloaded pretending to be a Linkin Park album. His dad had to pay some guy from a local shop the equivalent of forty dollars to reinstall Windows. That story scared me enough to Google “free antivirus” before I did anything else on that laptop, and AVG Free was the first result that did not look like it would give me another virus.
I installed it and for the next three years, that was my whole security strategy. AVG sat in the system tray, its little icon changed colors occasionally, and I assumed that meant it was working. I never got it open unless a scan popped up. I never read a report. I had no idea what “heuristic detection” was and did not care. What mattered was that the laptop survived everything I threw at it — and at fifteen, I was throwing a lot at it. Torrent sites, cracked games, email attachments from strangers, flash drives from friends that had been in twenty other machines before mine. AVG caught things silently. I would see a small notification that a threat was quarantined and click “OK” and go back to whatever I was doing. It was like having a guard dog that barked, but never had to be fed.
That honeymoon period lasted until 2013 or so. By this time I had upgraded to Windows 7, purchased my own Acer laptop with money from graduation, and installed AVG Free out of habit. But something had changed. The pop-ups started. Not the old “your virus definitions are updated” kind. Real, aggressive, in-your-face pop ups telling me my computer was AT RISK in bold red letters, that hackers COULD BE watching me, that I needed to upgrade to AVG Internet Security RIGHT NOW for a special discounted price of $49.99. The first time it happened, I really freaked out. I thought I had been hacked. Then I realized it was AVG itself attempting to sell me something and I felt betrayed in a small stupid way that only makes sense if you’ve trusted a piece of software like a friend for years.
I did not upgrade. I clicked all of the “No thanks” and “Remind me later” buttons I could find. But the pop-ups kept coming. Once a day, sometimes twice. Always when I was in the middle of something – writing a paper, watching a movie, on a Skype call. There is a special kind of rage that comes from being interrupted by a security product to tell you that you are not secure enough. It is like a smoke detector that goes off every morning to remind you that you do not have a fire extinguisher.
Here is the thing that I did not understand until much later, AVG was bought by Avast in 2016, and after that purchase, they began sharing the same malware engine. Same detection signatures, same cloud scanning infrastructure, same everything under the hood. The only difference was the color scheme and the logo. I discovered this from some Tom’s Guides comparison around 2020 and felt like I had been choosing between 2 identical cereals in different boxes for years. AV-Test gives them the same scores — 6 out of 6 for protection, 6 out of 6 for performance — because they are literally the same product running the same code. If someone tells you they switched from Avast to AVG or vice versa and noticed a difference they are imagining it.
When they do catch something, though, they do catch it well. I will give credit where it is merited. In 2019 I clicked on a link in a WhatsApp message from a contact whose account had been hacked. The page attempted to download something and AVG prevented it from downloading before the file was even finished downloading. The notification said “Threat secured” and displayed the file name — some gibberish .exe with a random string of numbers. I went to VirusTotal later out of curiosity. It was a trojan. Forty-seven of seventy engines marked it. AVG was one of the first. That one moment probably made every annoying pop-up I had endured for six years worth it.
But there was another time that went the other way. In 2021 I plugged in an old USB drive that was sitting in a drawer for years. AVG scanned it and said it was clean. A week later, my browser’s home page had changed to some search engine I had never heard of and I was getting redirected to ad pages. I ran Malwarebytes — which I kept installed as a second opinion scanner — and it found three PUPs which AVG had completely ignored. Potentially Unwanted Programs, the Gray Area Stuff Toolbars, Browser Hijackers, Adware bundled in legitimate looking installers. AVG has always been weak here. It focuses on the big threats — trojans, ransomware, worms — and treats the small parasites like they are not worth the effort. For someone who knows how to clean up a browser manually that is OK. For my mother, who called me in a panic because her Google looked different, it was a problem.
I finally paid for AVG Internet Security once in 2022. The annual sale took it down to $29.99 for the first year and I thought, fine, let me see what the fuss is about. The firewall was legitimately good — it told me which app’s were connecting to the internet and allowed me to block them individually. The ransomware shield added a layer over my Documents and Photos folders which prevented unauthorized changes. The fake website protection caught a phishing page that was imitating my bank’s login. These features worked. They were not revolutionary, but they worked.
Then the first year was over and AVG tried to bill me $79.99 for renewal. Not $29.99. Not even $49.99. Seventy-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. I had not agreed to this, or at least I thought I had not. Somewhere in the purchase flow there was probably a line of text in size-eight font explaining that the introductory rate was a one-time offer. I cancelled immediately and the cancellation process took me through four different pages, each one asking if I was sure, offering me a smaller discount, and warning me about the dangers of going unprotected. It was like breaking up with someone who keeps asking “but what if you get hacked?” I received my cancellation confirmation email three days later. Some people on Reddit were not so lucky – I read threads where people said AVG charged them even after they cancelled and they had to dispute through their bank.
I went back to the free version. Still using it as of today on my secondary laptop. The malware engine remains top tier since it is still Avast’s engine and every independent lab confirms that. AV-Comparatives gave it a Gold Award in 2025. Detection rates against zero-day threats are well over 99 percent in all tests I have seen. The real-time protection is good. The smart scan takes about four minutes on my machine and checks for out-of-date software, weak passwords and network vulnerabilities in addition to malware.
But I have to be honest: I do not recommend AVG to people anymore. Not because the protection is bad — it is not. The protection is excellent. I stopped recommending it because every time I set it up for someone I have to spend twenty minutes turning off notifications, scheduling scans manually — AVG decided to remove default scan scheduling in 2025 for some reason nobody has explained — and warning them about the renewal trap if they ever decide to pay. That is too much maintenance for software that is supposed to be maintenance-free.
The AVG I put in that Dell Inspiron in 2009 was a gift. A truly free, truly quiet, truly helpful tool that protected people who could not afford to pay for protection. The AVG that is present in 2026 is a marketing funnel with antivirus clothes on. The engine in it is still the best in the world. I just wish the company around it deserved the engine it built.
