[Orionos]

For everyday use Windows Defender is fine to me. If I'm ever doing something risky, I'll have a one time VM (probably still not bullet proof).

My gut feeling is that antivirus companies selling solutions to the average customer are scams since Windows Defender does the work 99% of the time. Plus their "selling" techniques are often limited to forgetting a checked box and annoying popups 30 days after that.

In a company setup / or if you're at risk (journalism, politics or preferring tabs over spaces) it probably makes sense to have an antivirus.

Feel free to uninstall the McAfee malware.

[thejammahimself]

I think if I were 'at risk' like the examples you gave, I would probably not trust any non-free antivirus software. Especially not McAfee.