

In previous versions of the OS, the standard antivirus could be completely stopped through the settings, not in the top ten. They believe that this utility is unnecessary, consumes PC resources and is generally irritable. Many users do not use standard antivirus as their primary means of protection. If you install third-party antivirus software on your computer, the Windows Defender Real-Time Scan Engine is disabled, but the utility itself does not turn off and is still available for manual scanning of your PC. The easiest way to disable the SmartScreen filter is to use a system settings menu called “App & Browser Control,” which can be accessed from the Start menu.Windows Defender is a standard antivirus app that ships by default with Windows 10 that provides real-time protection and on-demand scans. At times like these, you should turn SmartScreen off. However, there may be times when it’s getting in the way of you visiting sites or downloading things that you know are safe but just haven’t been verified by SmartScreen. Overall, SmartScreen is a handy security layer that you’re better off leaving on. If it’s a program, you’ll usually have the option to “Run Anyway.” If SmartScreen pops up on a website you know is safe, you can click “More Information” and report it as a safe site. It runs in the background on Windows 10 and will usually manifest as a big blue box saying “Windows protected your PC” by blocking a given program or website.

It essentially uses a big database of whitelisted and blacklisted sites to analyze whether a given thing is safe to open. SmartScreen works as an early warning system to let a user know whether a site or app is suspicious or a downloaded file wasn’t found in its list of safe software programs.
