How Threat Guard is funded
This site carries paid links. One product is covered that we hold a commercial arrangement for: TotalAV. When a reader follows our link to the TotalAV website and subscribes there, the vendor pays Threat Guard a commission. The reader pays the vendor's own price; going through us costs no more than typing the address directly.
That payment buys a link, not an opinion. Nothing here is worded, ordered or omitted because of it, and the six steps were written to be useful to somebody who ignores the link completely. The arrangement is set out in full on the affiliate disclosure page.
Who this path is written for
The reader we had in mind is an adult in Australia looking after a handful of devices — a laptop, a couple of phones, a tablet a teenager uses, perhaps a desktop that also handles a small business's invoices. They have heard of ransomware and phishing without being sure where one stops and the other starts, and they would like to make a sensible decision once and not think about it again for a year.
That reader is poorly served by most of what is written about this category, because most of it is written to sell — either by inventing urgency, or by dismissing paid software entirely as though caution alone covered every household. What follows tries to be specific instead: what this class of software does, what it does not, and how to tell whether the difference is worth money to you.
The order matters. Knowing what real-time scanning is makes the feature lists in step three readable. Knowing what is already installed tells you whether you are buying a first layer or replacing something that works. And the last two steps have the largest effect for the least money, which is why they are never the first thing anyone tries to sell you.
How the six steps fit together
Understand, then check
Steps one and two are diagnostic. They end with you able to say what is running on each device and what it covers — the only sound basis for deciding whether to add anything.
Compare, then install
Steps three and four are the decision. Step three gives a comparison method that works for any vendor, including the ones we have no relationship with; step four covers the install, where most avoidable problems begin.
Maintain, then respond
Steps five and six keep the decision working: updates, passphrases, multi-factor sign-in and a tested backup, then who to contact in Australia when something has already gone wrong.
The one product we are paid to link to
TotalAV is a consumer security product sold directly by its vendor on a subscription basis. It is the only product on this site behind a paid link, and we say so wherever the link appears rather than once in small print at the bottom.
We deliberately publish no price, discount, feature matrix or verdict for it. Subscription pricing in this category changes often, differs by country and term, and renewal prices are commonly not the introductory ones — so the current terms belong on the vendor's own page, read before you pay. The comparison step explains which of those terms to look for.
Paid link. Threat Guard is paid a commission by the vendor if you subscribe after following this link. It opens the vendor's own website in a new tab, your price is unchanged, and you are under no obligation to use it.
What this site does not do
It collects nothing. There is no form anywhere on Threat Guard — no newsletter box, no quiz, no account, no live chat — so there is nothing to sign up for and nothing for us to lose in a breach.
It sets no cookies, on any page: no analytics tag, no advertising pixel, no third-party script, nothing stored in your browser. That is also why you have not been shown a consent banner — a banner on a site with no cookies would be a false statement. The cookie policy covers this, and the privacy policy covers the one thing recorded: the ordinary web server log kept by our hosting provider.
It will never simulate a scan, display a warning dressed up as your operating system, or tell you that you are infected. No web page can know the state of your computer, and any page that claims to is performing a trick.
Official Australian services worth knowing before you need them
Each appears again in step six with notes on which fits which situation. Worth bookmarking now, while nothing is wrong.
- Australian Cyber Security Centre — the Commonwealth's cyber security agency, which publishes guidance for individuals and small business and operates the national cybercrime reporting service.
- Scamwatch — run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, for recognising scams and reporting them.
- eSafety Commissioner — Australia's regulator for online safety, including image-based abuse, cyberbullying and adult cyber abuse.
- Office of the Australian Information Commissioner — privacy regulator, and where a data breach complaint goes if the organisation involved does not resolve it.
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission — consumer law, including misleading claims and your rights when a subscription is not what was advertised.
How coverage here is decided
Honestly and narrowly: the educational material is general and applies to any product in the category, while the only commercial link goes to the single vendor we have an arrangement with. We run no laboratory and publish no scores, because we conduct no tests. Coverage order follows the learning sequence, not commercial value, and if the arrangement changes the about page and the disclosure page change with it.
Questions people arrive with
Do I need paid antivirus software in Australia?
There is no legal requirement to buy security software, and nobody here will tell you that you are obliged to. Whether it is worth paying for depends on what is already running on your devices, how many there are, who uses them, and how much of your financial life sits on them. Steps two and three let you answer that for yourself.
Is the free protection built into my computer enough?
For some households, the built-in tools plus disciplined updates and multi-factor sign-in cover the realistic risks. For others — shared family machines, a small business handling client data — the extra features in a paid suite earn the subscription. Step two sets out what the built-in tools cover, so the comparison is fair.
Does this site test the products it writes about?
No. We publish no benchmark numbers, detection rates or scores, because we run no tests. Independent laboratories do publish that work and you can read it at the source; what we provide is a method for reading those results, and vendor feature lists, critically.
Will you email me anything?
Only if you email us first, at the address in the footer. There is no mailing list and no form, so no list of readers exists.
Begin with step one
The first step is the most useful: what this software actually does when it runs, described without the metaphors about shields and vaults.