We've not paid for ANY "protection" for decades.And, the three times my wife and one of her cousins got web-hacked, it was simple to fix. Two instances, turn off and restart, and one of "safe mode" and clear the browser various memories.
I remember when McAfee was installing viruses to charge you to get rid of “their” virus...
About then is when I decided to experiment and run with zero virus protection. I never got another virus after that... The only thing I could figure was that a virus is designed to look for and identify what antivirus you have installed before it will execute because it needs to know what to work around. And if it can’t find any at all then it cannot continue execute.