NEVER install these programs on your PC... EVER!!! 

You left out Windows11.

I remember early days of the internet we all worried about "Pop-Up Ads"......Now the whole internet is one big "Pop-Up Ad"

Thanks for this. I've been a PC tech since 1996, and clients NEVER EVER listen to me about avoiding spurious websites. And then they call me when their PC is toast. Oh well, their ignorance keeps me in business.

First thing that I uninstall when I buy a new Dell is McAffee... thank you for vindicating this! 🙂

1:08 Norton 2:03 McAfee 4:17 NordVPN 7:53 Shopping extension 11:03 PC speed booster 15:51 Pre installed software 17:36 Other software included in free programs 18:30 Precautions in pirating software

You all should 100% do a video where you load all of these and other programs onto a rig, test the hell out of it, and then remove them and test it again. Just for fun.

For two summers in a row while I was still in school, my full time job was to work for an IT department at a factory going through all the new PC's they were buying and deleting all the garbage software they had preinstalled. It was such a long process that even doing it full time, it took me 6 months.

I keep a Chromebook on the side that has never been logged in, I run it in guest mode only. If I'm shopping for something or want to research anything controversial I use that Chromebook to keep that activity from being reflected back at me on my primary computer. It's so annoying to buy underwear on Amazon and see nothing but underwear ads for weeks. 😀

Incognito mode does NOT do anything to hide your information or data transferred from your ISP or any bad actors. Incognito mode is not more secure, it just doesn't store browser data locally. That's all it does.

Norton used to be awesome, but even Norton himself suggests not using it after he sold it. They turned it into a monster of a joke.

The FIRST general rule to avoid any scams (apart from never click on a link within an email) is, if you receive an email that says ANYTHING about being charged at all then call your credit card company and check your purchases THERE. Do not call any numbers they give you. Call the number on your statements. Basically, when checking, stick to things you know are reputable / real.

Working in Computer Sales, One of the most interesting things i found with Norton was that, i ran another antivirus while Norton was on the PC as well. It got a hit saying that there was a virus hidden in Norton. This made sense as a heap of customers were getting virus on their computers once the Norton subscription had run out. Some hadn't even been on the internet and the virus popped up from nowhere.

Norton and McAfee have been crap for over 20 years. Back then, I was a computer tech and the amount of effort that it took to clean up the mess they left (god help you if it crashed during install) was insane. Calling them resource hogs is an understatement.

About 20 years ago, if that, a nurse friend of mine, who was recently disabled, put Norton Utilities on her new computer... the computer all but froze. It took FOREVER for just one web page to load, if at all; the same for all programs on her computer. She was in a wheelchair, was somewhat of a computer novice, and called me for help. I'd say it took me between 50 and 60 HOURS to get Norton-Not-So-Useful-Utilities off her computer. After that, wiping her hard drive and reinstalling her operation system and programs was a comparative "walk in the park." For years now, when asked about Norton, I say, "RUN!" FOOTNOTE: getting rid of McAfee, some years later, cured many undiagnosable, and annoying, issues on my computer.

6:22 - I just want to thank you for actually being one of the extremely few large RU-vidrs to point this out. A company losing your data and lying about it is not a company you should be trusting. Fantastic video overall and I agree with every single tip in this video (Surprisingly - I didn't expect to o_O)

Years ago I had speculated that Norton had hackers in their basement developing and deploying virus software into the internet so they would always have a reason to stay in business.

My gf's mom had so many "bars" from installed applications in her browser that the actual window was half the size lol.

My Mum just bought a $1400 laptop, then got talked into paying for norton and office. The first thing I did was uninstall Norton, then she told me she paid for it... I told her next time don't buy a computer without me.

I'm a first time viewer here. The last 30 seconds of the video made me a subscriber. lmao I used to tell customers at my computer store, "Be careful about those websites. Internet girls are like real girls. A lot of them will give you a virus."

100% on Norton and McAfee. It can take several hours to fully get rid of them.. Or so you think they are gone.. lol Just for a new Lenovo laptop from my employer, and it had McAfee pre-installed on it. We un-installed McAfee since that's not the anti-virus we use, and we STILL get McAfee pop-ups daily saying our protection is expired. It's the software that won't go away.

I'm so glad you discussed Norton and McAfee. I've told people to stay away from those for 20 years.

I feel lucky, my Mom is paranoid enough to not click _any_ link in an email, without asking me to check it first.

We got our first computer in 1982. It was a Commodore 64SX, the 35lb laptop with a 5" monitor.

I regularly help people out by fixing their PC. From my experience I can totally agree with every statement you make in this video.

I don't even click links in emails I do trust. Financial places I go directly to them and log in, just in case.

This is freaky, I work at Mattress Firm, and I literally talked to a lady about an email that she got from "Norton" saying they were charging her $500 for her subscription. I told her DON'T CALL THAT NUMBER! And then I watch this video...

I love his internal frustration just talking, the temple rubbing. So relatable. Also Revo uninstaller is kinda neat.

I have an internet base "Free" phone number that I use to call those email scam numbers, unfortunately there are just a few scam centers and most of them hang up on me now before I can get 3 or 4 words out. You're right with your perspective in this video, that's refreshing to find.

When a product is free, then you are the product...

My dad is not that old and despite having moved on, he worked with computers a lot when he was younger. Back when we only had a family computer we had to share, you would not believe how hard I fought with him because he kept installing three different anti virus and then complained the pc was slow

"we have found x amount of errors" etc, yet perfectly safe...

Bloatware is precisely why I built my own PC. I get to have full control over what's in and what goes on my system at all times. The only real exception is when Windows re-installs stuff I don't actually need, but I can always remove 'em one way or another, whether it's using an uninstaller or just deleting it through powershell

I actually got both Norton and McAfee scam emails and even got followed up with an email saying that I was charged on a paypal account I didn't even have.

protip: whenever you receive a new PC prebuilt or not. Wipe the drive completely and reinstall. We've seen instances of machines shipping with malware on them from the get go. Be careful out there.

You should probably also do a video on what paid programs or anti-virus software you should ABSOLUTELY have on your PC. I've been stuck on Norton for a while now not just because I've manage to work around using it, but mostly because I don't trust a lot of others either; Avast and AVG are complete trash as well (probably as much as Norton, tbh) but I've come to expect as much from free software. Maybe you have some info to share on the subject, or free programs comparable to the paid ones you feel are generally useful to your audience. stuff like e-mail applications, Hardware Monitors, RGB-control software or stuff like Notepad++.

Fun Fact: You can set up your own vpn through AWS or pretty much any virtual server in pretty much any country on the planet. Safer and much harder for anyone to detect that it's a VPN since it's only you or people you let use it.

"YOU ARE A PROGRAMMER. YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS SH**." absolutely sent me 🤣 people are so funny

For the VPN discussion. ISPs won't block VPN connections in general because that would create huge issues as most businesses use VPNs on some level including for people who work remotely. They might block specific VPN providers, but any halfway decent provider would be able to change the systems that are blocked creating a headache for any ISP blocking them. Also incognito mode doesn't stop anyone from sniffing network traffic, only a tunnel of some kind like a VPN will. It is easy to setup your own VPN for use like when traveling or on public WiFi and there are plenty of guides for that either a VPN to your home network, or to something like AWS or linode or any other hosting provider, that type of setup can be cheap or free and at least protect you on public WiFi networks.

Your VPN non recommendation is like getting my tech news from my mom.

Love the way you ended this. I have tons more Respect due to your analogy.. Keep Rockin it.

I remember around 2010 I had a new laptop and read that the camera could be turned on without the owner's knowledge. I removed the program, it was re-installed, I removed it again, etc. That was shocking and a revelation of how constantly users were even then being data collected and spied on. I had already covered the lens but I wanted it off my computer. I also stuck silly putty over the microphone to mute it.

i was one of those people who installed four free antiviruses at once. i don't remember what they were, but Avast was one of them. i thought it would give my machine a boost and give me four layers of protection. i learned the hard way why i couldn't play video games above 16 frames.

from 1996 - 2010, I would reinstall the OS on my Windows machines every 6 months AT MOST in order to make sure my registry was so fresh and so clean. Well, my experience building machines back when Windows XP was still the boss scarred me as well, and it took me a long time for me to accept that it was okay to actually have my PC plugged into the internet before I had a firewall/anti-virus installed on the machine. I'd also like to point out that I have a still working PC somewhere (in my closet or garage now) that has an installation of Debian/FreeBSD (it was my home FTP forever) on it from 2004. The last time that I broke it out was during the pandemic, but I'd bet pretty decent money it'd still be okay if we plugged it in today. I even have a PowerPC monster lurking in that closet (a place known as the "Elephant Graveyard") with some build of AmigaOS driving it, but that's a completely different and much darker story than the Debian/FreeBSD machine.

I'm so glad you made this video. I was debating whether I should download RAM or not, and now I know it's safe or you would have mentioned it 😊

John McAfee had almost nothing to do with the Anti-Virus-Suite since 1994, after he stepped down in the company and esp. in 1997, when he sold the company.

Man! So glad to see somebody calling out all of this garbage! A shop I contract repair work for deals with this on a daily basis, and people will actually push back thinking that we're giving them bad advice about these junk programs. It's a real pain some days.

it should be noted, Spectrum, the ISP, forces people to use ISP-Owned Modems now (and they're "free" now as a result.) The ISP-owned modems Spectrum uses will scrub your packets forcibly as they go in and out, even if your router has a hardware-based/hosted VPN, and regardless of you using a software-based VPN or not, will know if you're doing something, EG: Pirating. Spectrum also will sometimes send data through to your router to try and partially brick it to make it perform worse or even shut down every week. Open Source-based Routers (EG: OpenWrt) can't be bricked in this way.

I've known Norton and McCafee were terrible for years now, it is so refreshing seeing someone here talking about it. They are both insane. ty

Did you know that Adobe allows their software to be pirated? The cracks that work on Adobe are the same exact cracks that have been used since photoshop 7 or earlier. There's minor differences, but they are essentially the same. I asked Adobe once at a job fair at my uni. I asked them because I knew they had really good student version pricing and I wanted to get in on that. Except here in Asia, for some reason, they don't... Their student version pricing required that the version you bought was the extended version of photoshop, which was regular price 1000 usd and discounted down to 700. Regular standard version of photoshop was 699. In the US, I think student version was 299. But you had to buy through the uni and they could only get what was regionally available. So I waited until I did a class back in Canada and bought in then with Production Premium cs5.5, which was an awesome deal. And then I upgraded to cs6 which was still cost effective. And then they screwed everyone with CC and I vowed "not one penny more" goes into their greedy pockets. And you had better believe I have lived up to that. Fuck em.

BonziBuddy not mentioned, we're so back BonziBros

Gotta love the ending thought of this video 🤣🤣 Also remember being brought up from quite a long time ago to never EVER install Norton or McAfee, I think apart from anything else from what I heard they always seemed to have a ridiculous amount of bloatware.

My Spousal Unit works in IT and the first thing he does on any of our new computers or any of our friends and family is to take of Norton and Macafee. Talk about Bloatware? Adobe. Expensive and crappy customer service. But as a photographer, it's got what I need. I did find a good Adobe acrobat alternative called PDF Gear. I haven't had any issues with it. Thank you for a great video.

My own Norton story - about 12 year ago I went to work in an accountants office as a junior accountant, I was given a computer with Norton installed on it, which was so old and slow that after typing several words I had to stop for a few seconds and let the computer catch up. I talked to my boss about this and he agreed to buy new computers for the entire office as they were all getting a little long in the tooth. Preparing for the new machines I backed up everything before deleting and reformatting the hard drives to make sure nothing would be recoverable. Norton was one of the first things I deleted and the performance increased to such a degree that if it were not present when I first started I probably would never of complained. I did not tell the boss about it at the time because those new computers were really needed. When the new computers arrived I also told him not to use Norton and he ended up shelling out for a proper anti virus program as well.

"the best way to not have to worry about wrapping your Jimmy is knowing where you're putting it is clean." Sage advice, Jay.

I've done my time using almost everything you mentioned, lol (except the shopping extensions). VPN's never worked for me because the internet here is trash, and the speed drop while connected made it unusable. I've seen the trail of little data packets left behind when you 'uninstall' some of these programs, and the cost of them just spiralled out of control. Thankfully, i believe I've learned from my mistakes.

Rule of thumb that goes beyond software: If it’s advertised by RU-vidrs and Podcasts it’s junk 99% of the time.

So an easy rule to remember is from the Richard Serra quote, "If something is free, you're the product"

Thanks for this. My dad's no longer around to advise me. Until he was 84 he was still building his own computers. He hated pretty much everything that came along after DOS (sort of joking here) He was so frustrated with all the extraneous stuff that was built into or added on to computers. I, as his 72 year old daughter am extremely careful and have my computers built to specifications I choose. And I don't use Google!

All good to hear I get so fed up with mc Afie's ads. I certanly dont how many umpteen times influencers have promoted apps like honey. I am so grateful for your sound and informed advice. Thank you Jay two cents

The best VPN is build in to Opera. For free is enabled US region. And US region is more than enough for all the information you want to get. For example - In Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia is restricted to check what is going on in Russia. VPN in Opera with US region removes these restrictions.

So true about Norton, constantly pestering to PURCHASE MORE MODULES.

Agree with everything apart from the VPN advice. Here in the UK if you travel to anywhere in Europe they are almost mandatory if you want to continue watching your streaming services. A VPN and an adblocker are the two things I would always have.

*Everyone should listen to/know this.* Great video. Even, "Fun!" That said, it could be about 2/3rds shorter. ("For me," maybe. Still, comforting to hear a pro say what I've been railing on for decades.)

You are a man after my own heart. The number of times I have told customers, friends and relations exactly what you are saying here. What also annoys me are all the useless background services, perhaps you could do a video about them please? Many thanks.

It's really great that big RU-vidrs are speaking the truth. I'm a developer and when you see how much damage bad virus scanners do to the economy in the form of lost productivity, I estimate the damage to be x times greater than that caused by viruses themselves. Backup systems and good hardware firewalls are much more efficient here.

Great video - Thanks Microsoft Onedrive. I use this. Tip: remove it from your list of software to run at start up. When you want to sync your data to the cloud run it. Then exit again. It will then not be running in the background using up resources.

3:41 - this depends. I have Proton setup on my home server through wireguard and it gives me nearly 90% of the rated speed of my ISP, which is much better than most of the devices get on WiFi. I pay for Proton for their email and they just happen to bundle VPN with that, which explains why I get good speeds. I torrent a boatload of stuff, so I definitely need it. Your mileage may vary.

about 8 years ago i discovered the solution to almost all these issues. bought a Mac, never looked back.

I absolutely feel your pain about optimizers. Doesn't matter how often I ask him not to, my dad will occasionally install those "PC cleaner and optimizer" on his laptop. He'll also install three of them side by side, and then ask me why his system is running slow. Fun fact - one of them once wiped a bunch of his documents.

Very brave of Jay to do this. These guys will never sponsor him. Guess he has moral fiber and is not a shill. Thanks for giving us the honest truth Jay.

Paretologic's 'anti-virus' completely destroyed one of my Windows installations years ago and I eventually gave up trying to fix the damage it did.

The one difference with honey in the shopping extension part, is that it's not designed to compare prices, it's designed to find applicable coupon codes at the checkout part. But I can still understand why you don't want any of those on a PC.

I've watched hundreds of your videos, never commented, but I'm a subscriber. i feel i have to comment today though. That's the best ending ever to any tech video i have ever seen..

Adobe Acrobat Updater is practically a virus. There are so many software installers that by default will install Adobe Acrobat Reader and the updater. If you uninstall Acrobat, the updater is still running and puts it back. I've seen PCs with like 10 disabled acrobat updaters in the startup.

Bloatware is the bane of PC's everywhere. Fortunately, I've been running Linux as my daily driver for over 3 years, so I don't have to worry about this stuff anymore :D

Forgeting to include the link to the uninstaller video is a fumble Jay, ur lucky I'm gonna look for that video anyway ❤.

Jay always says that a specific link will be included in the description box and guess what, it’s NEVER there. This happens EVERY TIME and I’ve been watching this channel for sometime now.

The bloatware was so bad on my friends brand new laptop that it literally took 15 minutes to start, that is not an exaggeration. He wanted me to see if I could do anything and I didn't think it was bloatware but a problem with the computer itself. Well after doing a full backup image, then installing windows clean, it started like it was nuthin. I couldn't believe it, a mainstream PC store was selling a line of laptops with bloatware so bad it makes a brand new laptop start up for 15 minutes before you can do anything. This was in 2011.

Thank you for the great video. So which antivirus program is you favorite these days?

I use ExpressVPN and have never been throttled. It's still a great way to present another IP address to the Internet.

"I don't like being tracked." Says the man with the Microsoft Copilot icon in the lower right corner of his screen. 😂

Hey jay. I just wanted to say. I know this isn’t relevant to you or anyone here. But watching your videos have helped me tremendously with my mental health. Dealing with life and difficult things. I always find myself here watching your videos and it brings me comfort as a pc guy myself. I’m not the smartest with them but I do learn everyday. And I wanted to say thank you. Ik you don’t know me. But In this weird way your videos have helped save my life. Much love brother and keep it up

Totally agree.. I can't tell you how many PC's I have fixed by just removing Norton and McAfee.

Best ending to a video I've seen/heard in a long time!! Now, if I could just get Husband to stop clicking on every thing that pops up on his Chromebook, Mama would be a happy wife...

These are the same recomendations I've been giving people for years. Thank you, for verifying from a trusted source.

Great advice. Whenever I buy a new machine the first thing I do is wipe the hard drive and re-instal windows. Simple.

i remember working in a "pc repair" company once. after a while they got a contract with norton, so we were given an incentive to have that crap installed onto the customer computers for "low monthly fee". after some months of disagreements i got another job, i couldn't bring myself to have these poor people handle norton at all.

I've been using Norton since 2017 and haven't been hacked, and my PC isn't slow. I will keep using Norton.

I’m impressed your Dad could actually run both Norton and McAffe. They used to not even run after the other was installed because of the mess they left in the registry!

Oh man. I work in a computer repair shop and have identical advice for countless customers. Idk why I even watched the video.. may just to know that even one other person has some sense out there! Unrelated, that send off was perfect. Keep doing what you do man!

Informative, ty. When u mentioned HDD's, I did not feel old myself but my pc sure deed. Edit: great analogies.

13:30 Like you Dad, I started using computers in 1971 (learned to program on an IBM 360/370, which used EBCDIC instead of ASCII at the University of Miami). When it came to personal computers, I did everything manually, and to this day still hate the way control has been taken away from the user and put in the hands of Microsoft, or Apple if you are stupid enough to use Apple products. When I say everything, I mean everything, defragging hard drives, cleaning up registries, running antivirus scans, running various performance checks and system diagnostics, even to the point of reading hard drive data sector by sector when needed.

The mcafee story is insane, people should def watch that and it would change their mind, 100% of not using that sh*t.

don't forget to download some more RAM

JayZ, I've been pirating for 25+ years now and I've only got infected by malware twice. Great video, but if you're gonna say 'piracy is bad because viruses!' then it makes me question the rest of your points as well.

i was watching this one just waiting for you to mention something i already downloaded... i have that revo uninstaller up ready..

Oh, remember my struggles uninstalling Norton many years ago. I am pretty tech savvy, but that almost bested me!

You’re a true IT guy right there! I’m sure you can imagine how many PC’s I “fixed” that had most of all that crap you mentioned.

Seeing all these podcast plugs for Honey was really disgusting to me because it's so disingenuous, with what that addon really does.

There actually was a show on McAfee that played just like a crime show series including automatic weapons, a private security squad, and murder. Then how he got caught. Except it was based on real events.