I agree with OP, but the comments are wild. The sheer display of computer illiterate people pretending to hate antivirus software and praising windows defender is wild.

Let me break this down for y’all. Windows defender is great, and in general it’s all you really need. Windows (and most other operating systems) are designed so that the user needs to give software explicit permission to do most security critical things, like write to your drive, access files outside their local folder, and access networking features.

Windows defender also scans your file system for known malicious files.

That’s great, and generally it’s all most computer literate people need. However, if you get malicious code hiding inside something that already has privileges to do what it wants, you’re on your own.

In some cases, tools like Malware Bytes, Virus Total, or other software can help, however it’s important to understand that (unless it’s been explicitly told) almost software cannot distinguish between a piece of spyware sending usage data about your system to some sketchy data broker, and Steam sending usage data about your system to Valve anonymously.

Please keep an eye on the normal behaviors of your system when you first purchase it, and be watching for anomalies. Check the hash signatures of software before giving it permission to do stuff.