Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisV
Is there a case for not using AV software. I've "been told" by a trusted source (my son) that any reasonable virus will clobber you even if you have it as AV software is always behind anything bad.
|
Simple answer: yes
In practice: it requires you to know how to secure your system and maintain health clean computer practices which is almost impossible because people are so dumb. Plain and simple very very dumb.
Many viruses are also dumb and easily picked up by all virus scanners but they have never been eradicated so they still get spread by people.
No virus scanner can catch all the new viruses coming out constantly, they need to start infecting and get reported back to Kaspersky etc to analyse and add to their definitions file to catch and delete. BTW DELETION has long been the default thing to do with infected files, none CLEAN the files so you are losing files and some may be files programs depend on to run so you more infections you clean the less stable your system becomes plus the more of your valuable data is lost.
Virus is a specific type of attack vector, Malware is another, Rootkit another, spyware etc. they are all different, and not all AV software deals with them all so if you dont educate yourself on all the hazards then you are not smart enough to decide what protection you need or if yours is suitable or not.
Using the "free" version of a commercial program will limit what it deals with, because its in their interest to encourage you to pay for the full product. There are free programs though that are every bit as good or better than the commercial programs. cost is no guarentee of protection or cleanliness. I dont care what credentials you claim to have, or how clean your system is, 100% protection 100% of the time is impossible, but you can make it close to 100% especially for the dumb attacks. But more attacks now are using various attack vectors to piece together information about/from people without you even knowing its happening.
Make whatever assumptions you want and live with the consequences. don't disable features or rely on free versions of software to think you're safe. You can't even depend on a brand new computer being clean, so stop saying "my computer is clean because.." because you are wrong. Infections take all shapes and hide mostly these days, but like i said no viruses have been eradicated so they can all come into play and no assumptions can be made on safety.
There are also deliberate false positives for things like cracks for commercial software both because microsoft and adobe etc have paid to have them looked for to remove thus disabling illegal use of their software but the are also great delivery vectors for actual nasty infections because humans are dumb and will run a keygen because they badly want to not pay for some software and doubt its much risk of infection. So these things persist and the infection may not be obvious, not many make themselves know or cause damage theres big money to be made by logging keyboard inputs and sending that information somewhere to be looked through for login and password details, names addresses, phone number, social security numbers and of course credit card details. Sure you might think you are not important enough or its too much effort for people to bother wasting time but your morals and values mean nothing. There are many people doing this sort of thing in poorer countries. There is a whole undustry for it in many countries and also the mentality that if you are dumb enough to be suckered in by a nigerian prince scam then you deserve to lose your money.
Clam AV is totally free as is Immunet as well as using your hosts file to block problematic IP addresses. This will get you to a reasonably secured system that blocks most of the simple things. Don't install any pirated software and if you buy a built computer insist on the windows licence certficate (not a piece of paper with a number on it). Or move to Linux (MacOS is basically linux but its targetted more often than linux is). You always have options, complaining about intrusive popups is NOT one of them.