Burnt $120 on a yearly antivirus subscription and still got hit with ransomware

Last November I paid $120 for a big-name antivirus package thinking I was covered. Two months later my work laptop froze and every file turned into a .locked mess. The support line kept telling me to run their scanner, but it found nothing because the damage was already done. I lost about 30 hours of projects and had to pay a guy $80 to decrypt what he could. That free built-in Windows Defender would have done the same job for zero dollars. So I'm wondering, is anyone actually getting real value from paid antivirus these days, or is it all just snake oil for peace of mind? What did you all switch to after something similar happened to you?

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parkerbrown1mo ago

Backup situation aside, what was the actual infection vector? Did you click something sketchy or was it a drive-by from a compromised site? Because that changes the whole math on whether the AV even mattered. I've seen people get hit from legit-looking PDFs and from old plugins on their own sites, and in both cases the paid software did nothing useful. If it was a phishing thing, then yeah, no subscription is gonna save you, but I'm curious how you figure you got the ransomware in the first place.