Microsoft Defender Antivirus is an anti-malware component of Microsoft Windows. It was first released as a downloadable free anti-spyware program for Windows XP, and was later shipped with Windows Vista and Windows 7. Advanced antivirus software to defend against today’s cyberthreats. Built into Windows 11, routinely updated, and at no extra cost to you.7 That’s Windows.
 
 

Microsoft Defender Antivirus compatibility with other security products | Microsoft Docs.Download Microsoft Security Essentials from Official Microsoft Download Center

Best Retro Controllers for Pi. Best Stereo Amplifiers. Best Surge Protectors. Reader Favorites Best Linux Laptops. Best Wi-Fi Routers. Awesome PC Accessories. Best Wireless Earbuds. Best Smartwatches. Best Meta Quest 2 Accessories. Best Home Theater Systems. Browse All News Articles.

Google Assistant on Wear OS 3. Microsoft Edge Duo Transition Changes. Amazon Buys Roomba. Pinch-to-Zoom on YouTube. Start11 on Steam. Word Online Review Mode. Galaxy Unpacked: How to Watch. GFN Thursday Microsoft Teams on Apple Silicon. Detect Hidden Surveillance Cameras.

Dark Mode on Every Website in Chrome. Disable Bing in Windows 10 Start Menu. Hide Steam Games You’re Playing. To find your organization’s contact information, sign in to the Company Portal website. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Download Microsoft Edge More info. Table of contents Exit focus mode. Table of contents. After installing, sign in with your personal Microsoft account such as outlook. When you first sign into Microsoft Defender on Android, we’ll walk you through a few easy steps that start with setting up web protection.

During this process, we’ll ask you to give Defender permission to do two things: run in the background and use the Accessibility Service.

A security tool that only works sometimes isn’t nearly as effective. You want Microsoft Defender to always watch your back, protecting you from the malicious sites you weren’t expecting. In order to do that, Defender needs permission to run in the background.

In order to make sure the site you’re going to isn’t known to be dangerous, Defender needs to be able to see the address.

To do that on Android, we use the Accessibility Service to read, almost literally, the address from your browser. Important: Only one app at a time can have permission to use the Accessibility Service. If you give that permission to a different app, web protection in Defender will be turned off. After setting up web protection, we’ll set up anti-malware protection.

To do this we need to ask for a couple more permissions. Microsoft Defender scans apps and files on your device to watch for possible threats. To do that, it needs to be able to access those files. We only use that permission to look for malicious apps, a process that happens entirely on your device. No information about your apps or files is sent to Microsoft. If you want Microsoft Defender to tell you if we find a threat, you’ll need to allow us to send you notifications on your device.

Note: If you already allowed Microsoft Defender to run in the background for web protection, you won’t be asked for this permission again.

Protecting your device is a full-time job, but you probably want to use your device for other things, like texting, gaming, work, and entertainment. By allowing Microsoft Defender to run in the background, you allow us to help keep you safer all the time. Finally, Microsoft Defender will run an initial scan of your device to see if there are threats already on it.

This scan usually only takes a minute or two. If that initial scan finds any threats Microsoft Defender will notify you and help you remove them. When you first sign into Microsoft Defender on iOS, we’ll walk you through a few easy steps that to set up web protection.

During this process, we’ll ask you to give Defender permission to do two things: set up a local virtual private network VPN and allow notifications. Due to the built-in security settings in iOS, other apps aren’t able to see the address URL an app is trying to open, including those being opened in the web browser. To make sure the site you’re going to isn’t known to be dangerous, Defender needs to be able to see the address.

To do that, we set up a local VPN.