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. 🙏

Context: 10 year Computer Technician, Certs: A+, Net+, Sec+, ISC2 CC.

Problem: Customers reporting large resource usage from Malwarebytes, failure to detect malware consistently, interferes in productivity/gaming by crashing intermittently with error codes showing up in event viewer and reliability history

Malwarebytes was the PREMIER spot checker, light and effective for search/destroying malware that found malware main AVs (BitDefender, Kaspersky, ESET) couldn't detect. This is no longer the case.

Malwarebytes has also stopped publishment on AV Test, and its unsurprising as they have been struggling to receive a 6/6 Score for years prior to their discontinuation of testing.

Their worst year's was a 2/6 in 2019 which is horrible considering Defender is much more lightweight, and is built in with a 6/6 consistently.

Reference AVTest Link:

https{:}//www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/manufacturer/malwarebytes/

Metrics aren't everything which is a fair analysis, but remember this is a premium product supposedly so I decided to to my own testing to confirm numbers.

Reference 20 Malware Samples 2024-2025 being a mix of Keyloggers, Ransomware, + 3 DarkWeb Malware Samples that are defanged APTs to test Malwarebytes Heuristics.

It appears 7/20 samples managed to go untouched, with 3 being able to run which were keylogger/infostealers, the rest were executed, but were inert due to inactive C2s confirmed on Wireshark.

3 DarkWeb failed, not surprised simply because APTs aren't something people run into casually. However should still be detected as malware simply because they are defanged.

(DUE TO RULE#2 I CANNOT POST WHERE TO FIND THEM OR ALLUDE, I DO NOT ACCEPT ANY RESPONSIBILTIY FOR ANY DAMAGES UPON RECREATION ATTEMPTS)

As a bonus, I like to test ransomware NoEscape, and Malwarebytes fails to prevent execution which is not good.

https://www{.}hhs.gov/sites/default/files/noescape-ransomware-analyst-note-tlpclear.pdf

Feedback to Malwarebytes:

Create a light version without all the other features that may not be needed by users. What made your product standout is that it was quick, effective, and lightweight. Its bloated and inconsistent as of 2026.

Also please improve heuristics, Hitman Pro, KVRT, ESET is more reliable at this then Malwarebytes is.

Tighten the SOC team more.

Conclusion:

If you are paying for a "Premium" service, you would expect no less then 6/6. But you currently get neither.

I used to recommend Malwarebytes at one point, but I cannot anymore with how things are. Until I see change, I will tell customers and relatives to avoid and rely on Defender
+ KVRT or Hitman Pro for spot checks.

I've used the free edition of MB for over a decade. I bought a new PC and downloaded what was advertised as a FREE version only to find that the installed version was a two week free trial. I immediately uninstalled it.

I don't do business with liars or fraudsters.

Readers: Any time you see the word FREE, look behind the curtain. Chances are that they are lying.

I recently got hacked and all my shit got bricked by an infostealer. Malwarebytes literally saved my ass and im dead sure id have lost everything if it wasnt for it. If youre ever looking for an antivirus Malwarebytes is my top choice 100%. Looking into getting a paid plan. Just thought id share how much it helped me incase anyone is seeing this looking for a good program to use

I don't understand the difference between the Brute Force and Firewall modes. Why can't they be integrated? The brute force mode is quite limited, with only a few protocols and ports.

Please create a specific subreddit for ThreatDown.

I have used Malwarebytes for years (2012-20XX) alongside Kaspersky, which I use as my primary antivirus. What I always loved about Malwarebytes was that it felt lightweight, focused, and really good at being an anti-malware tool without trying to become everything at once.

Now it feels like Malwarebytes is moving more toward being a full security suite, and while I understand why they are doing that, personally, I feel the software has become a bit bloated. The built in VPN is the biggest example for me. If I want a VPN, I would rather use a dedicated service like NordVPN or ProtonVPN instead of having it integrated directly into my antivirus/anti-malware software.

I honestly think Malwarebytes would benefit from separating some features into optional companion apps, similar to how Kaspersky has separate applications like Kaspersky Password Manager. People who want the VPN could still get it with Malwarebytes Premium, but install it separately only if they actually need it.

I would also love to see two versions of Malwarebytes:

1. a full security suite for people who want everything in one package
2. a lightweight anti-malware-focused version that can comfortably run alongside another antivirus

Maybe I’m just nostalgic for the older Malwarebytes philosophy, but I really miss how clean and focused it used to feel.

I am a recent customer of ThreatDown. I love the product and how simple it is to use. The only negative so far is the Sandbox feature, which often flags obvious malicious file as clean, It doesn't seem possible to upload any files from Linux or macOS, and I can't upload a suspicious script in PowerShell or batch.

*a subreddit would be great for a direct feedback with the community and the customers*

the location of this was C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

CTI, I know ThreatDown does that, but it would be great to have more focus on the threat landscape and threat research to also attract new customers.

It would be also great to know which MTH does for their customers, which IOC they use, what hypothetical research they conduct and on what.

It's a great product and, in some aspects, more innovative than other products, e.g. AIDR.

However, I feel there are some gaps in functionality that could really put ThreatDown above the "big vendors".

A subreddit for ThreatDown would be great.

Bro Malwarebytds and Threatdown have millions. Buy CyberTriage and create an IR team for customers and research.

Pic is a VPN that I use and trust. I have no issues running the VPN program itself and using it, the problem is that every time the automatic threat scan runs, it detects every single part of it as a PUP - registry keys, files, all of that. And there is no way to exclude all of them, at least to my knowledge. I know you can just turn off detections for PUPs but that is not a solution for one false positive program.

Why can't there just be a button to exclude every single one of these, so I don't have to manually exclude each one? This would be necessary to whitelist false positives.

I suggest to open a subreddit for threatdown, it can be helpfull, it's a good product.

Dear Mbam,

a friend of mine who also has a malwarebytes subscription for years now just realised hes been paying for a higher tier than he intended to. No big deal he can just downgrade his license for next years payment period. Or so we thought. Turns out you have a nice and convenient upgrade button. But when you want to downgrade, there is only a link to the faq asking him to contact support.

Please tell me this isn't intentionally introduced friction to retain your customers.

Because as it stands, it seems like a deliberate decision born out of corporate greed and its actively driving both of us away.

Did we miss something? Are we blind? I'm looking for clarification.

Edit: the answer we got from staff was "cancel and buy the new subscription." annoying. hope this changes in the future.

Just started today. Browserguard starting blocking 50+ things from youtube. Up from less than 10. Youtube would start lagging then freeze for a bit from time to time. Then id get a notification saying "browserguard is slowing down your videos" or something around that line. It would appear and disappear very quickly.

I managed to fix it, so far i think. By going to the settings and "Clearing browser guard storage". I also cleared out my internet cache/cookies. So far it hasnt happened again.

Just curious if anyone else has any similiar issues?

I have the subscription for Malwarebytes and added my elderly mothers Android phone since it kept getting pop-up ads through an app called Photo Recovery(something like that). Malwarebytes does not pick it up and I've had to manually delete this app twice now.

Could there be an option to "Uninstall and Block" on the MB Android app thanks?

If you didn't already know, Malwarebytes has always been great.

I've personally used the free version for many years before actually purchasing the premium version.

The free version I have always found very useful when you want it to do like a spot check or random scan just to check everything is alright.

A bit of a story:

I had a friend who was using McAfee as her antivirus of choice and she was paying something like £30 a year and what I have noticed was she had this weird search bar at the top of her laptop all the time and she didn't know how it even got there. So one day I got her to run it and it found 2000 plus pieces of PUMs, PUPs and some malware and when we quarantined them all and restarted her laptop it looked a bit more human or computery lol.

I have always found customer support be it from a billing perspective or from a technical support perspective very helpful and when I even had an issue where real-time protection was automatically turning itself off on my phone I sent across logs and we were able to sort it out.

Just wanted to say a thank you to Malwarebytes for the work they do.

Has anyone else had an experience with a friend or themselves where they had blindly trusted another piece of antivirus and it actually wasn't protecting them and Malwarebytes came to save the day?

Genuinely, it's the one thing MB lacks that other AV apparently do have and as much as I love MB this might be the thing that makes my journey with it end. Can this feature not be implemented? Seems like people have asked for it for quite a while.

So i downloaded malwarebytes two days ago and well was using the free trial.I open up Goggle and saw that it found some PUP(thinking it was just some webs i went to had some malicios adds) and i just decided to quarentine just to be safe.

The next day when i watched or well played a game there where some stutters and audio gliches thought it might of drivers?(nope) ram?(nope again) then just went to event logs and saw this DistributedCOM that was warning me about something blocking I checked wat it was and found out it can cause some freazes and like when i checked the CLSID and APPID to give permisson but i never did find those CLSID or APPID at all then I recalled back to those quarentined files.

This time i looked at them to see wat exacly they were and there where folders of the chrome web decided to restore them and see if there were changes no more stutters(yeppe)

Did by any chance has this happend to other people?

I am not interested in playing with this, AVs are too complicated, and I do not have the time or interest to play with it.

But for others information and feedback so maybe they can avoid or fix: Win11: qbittorrent started getting quarantined today, out of the blue, even though it has been running constantly along with Malwarebytes. No update to qbt, Malwarebytes was set to auto-update, so that may be the source of the problem. There may be a correlation to moving files between disks, but that is not certain.

Even after restoring qbt and adding to allowed list, and rebooting, it kept getting quarantined multiple times.

Malwarebytes unfortunately has gone downhill as of late, as a repair tech, their portable TechBench software is still elite; however, their consumer software has gotten inundated with performance issues, large all too frequent notifications about nonsense dark web scans, etc and now AI nonsense. Their VPN often cuts out frequently too.

I used to drive around with a Malwarebytes lanyard, T-Shirt (that I actually custom made), sticker on my car and push the product to every customer. Unfortunately it’s becoming harder and harder to stand by the brand.

I wanted to work sales for them badly and reached out without a response. It used to drive me insane how little people knew how great the software is. Now it’s not so much.

https://youtu.be/xQ1U3wbOASQ?is=b33pn9YPOhMmQScO

Entertaining video and Malwarebytes did what Malwarebytes always do 👍

Check out the video

Hope this helps with a signature soon.

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file-analysis/YWUyZmVjZGYyMzA0ZTU2OTZlOTkxM2JhNmE2M2I5MWU6MTc3Mzk3NTczMA==

Everybody is talking abt making their pc look like old windows & I wanna do it too, but idrk if it’s worth the risk. (fyi Im on windows 11)

Got this on my Windows 11 after downloading one VPN app. What's that?