AV recommendations?
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Marc Greiner wrote:
- Never start a programm (an exe) you do not trust or do not know the origin.
although this may seem simple it is not. You are sharing your computer with every other computer user that touched the install package of every software package you buy/get. If you never install or buy software, you may be safer than most. In the 1990's we bought at work a $150,000.00 inertial navigation system, the system came complete with the monkey virus. Because I was paying my penance stopping polymorphs based on my encryption algorithm, I had one of the few anti-virus programs of the site, because our boss too prescribed to your method. Well it may seem safe, but it is not. Sure you could always blame the company, it was their fault, but that doesn't help you out. The best way to stay safe is to prevent infection, and since you have absolutely no way of knowing the source of the infection, from commercial vendors to freeware, to hacked NORMAL sites, you have no way of knowing what NOT to do. You can reduce your risk by not invoking risky behavior, your rules do that. They reduce risk. It is impossible to eliminate risk, therefore for your own protection anti-virus writers have long since worked on ways to detect and prevent infection. The best time to catch a virus is before infection, the next best is as soon as possible before it spreads far. Nothing is 100% protection, but having an AV program significantly reduces your risk from unknown and unexpected sources. I have halted nearly a dozen infections in my professional career, one from my boss who got infected and it halted when I pulled the plug on the network after the virus attempted to infect my protected machine. If you live in a cave, and never use the internet, never turn on your machine, you are 100% safe. Outside of that, common sense is only the first step. The second is a good and updated AV program.
Interesting thread, thank's for your comments and examples. Question: how did the virus on the installation disk of the program your company bought infect the network ? Was it on a bootable CD? It happens that I download programms from the internet. If I am not sure if it is safe, I google its name to check for its safety. If it comes from well known companies, I do not even think of checking. I also trust the shareware sites as I will never ever be the first person downloading the corrupted piece of programm, or else I'd better play Loto (which I wont anyway). And since the community spreads the knowledge, a virus gets isolated quite quickly. At home, the kids do not (yet) have access to internet and are not allowed to install new software alone. At work, I am one of the only ones running my PC without an antivirus, I guess its a priviledge... (of working in a small company). It happens that collegues (with antivirus installed) get infected, the server too, I must be lucky as I did not get one virus up to now. Nowadays, viruses are mainly collecting email addresses, they do not harm the computer as badly as they used to do in the 90s. Somemore, if a computer gets infected, one can quickly find the proper way of deinfecting it. So I guess it is a compromise. It looks like I prefer to live a bit more dangerously than others (beeing sometimes one or two clicks away from an infection) but without the hassle of keeping my antivirus program up to date and letting it shake my hard disks for hours for nothing 99.9999% of the time and poping up each time I generate a new exe.
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Interesting thread, thank's for your comments and examples. Question: how did the virus on the installation disk of the program your company bought infect the network ? Was it on a bootable CD? It happens that I download programms from the internet. If I am not sure if it is safe, I google its name to check for its safety. If it comes from well known companies, I do not even think of checking. I also trust the shareware sites as I will never ever be the first person downloading the corrupted piece of programm, or else I'd better play Loto (which I wont anyway). And since the community spreads the knowledge, a virus gets isolated quite quickly. At home, the kids do not (yet) have access to internet and are not allowed to install new software alone. At work, I am one of the only ones running my PC without an antivirus, I guess its a priviledge... (of working in a small company). It happens that collegues (with antivirus installed) get infected, the server too, I must be lucky as I did not get one virus up to now. Nowadays, viruses are mainly collecting email addresses, they do not harm the computer as badly as they used to do in the 90s. Somemore, if a computer gets infected, one can quickly find the proper way of deinfecting it. So I guess it is a compromise. It looks like I prefer to live a bit more dangerously than others (beeing sometimes one or two clicks away from an infection) but without the hassle of keeping my antivirus program up to date and letting it shake my hard disks for hours for nothing 99.9999% of the time and poping up each time I generate a new exe.
Marc Greiner wrote:
Question: how did the virus on the installation disk of the program your company bought infect the network ? Was it on a bootable CD?
the Monkey came on a floppy disk, it required booting because the inertial navigation system software came encrypted. Thus there was no way to avoid it, only catch and halt it. We isolated the system immediately and cleaning was difficult, but easier than cleaning the fielded machines if the inertial navigation system had been deployed in the field -- the results would have been devastating. The other infection came in email from the head office, to my boss, so he opened it. You can't expect bosses to know everything you do, nor your clients, etc. You share your computer with everyone on your network, from your bosses, to HR, to accounting, to wiring techs. You have no idea their habits, and then their customer bases, and home offices. Viruses spread because 90% of the people don't know what a computer virus is, or how to stop it. I have cleaned uncountable virus programs off friends and business contacts computers. I always carry an anti-virus program with me because more common than hardware failure is virus attacks because the military believes exactly as you do. They are completely safe as long as everyone obeys those simple little rules. Well I clean up the aftermath, or stop it, one or the other. And I am tired of it. This mentality that a few professionals can be safe is too naive. The larger your contact base with the common man, the greater your danger, because they prescribe to your same logic and they have no freakin' idea how they are supposed to do it!
Marc Greiner wrote:
Nowadays, viruses are mainly collecting email addresses, they do not harm the computer as badly as they used to do in the 90s.
WRONG, big wrong! they can harm them more, but in different ways. There are some things that are sent in private emails that are not meant for the public, or your clients. Viruses even email viruses risk breaking that. Imagine emails to your boss going to your clients, imagine client emails going to other clients, imagine company secrets going out broad spectrum on the internet. No, viruses have only changed their weapons, they are not less dangerous. personally, I would rather a computer crash and burn. Backups are easy to restore. recalling emails, or undoing damage to company images, and restoring customer trust, have a value tha
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Funny might it seem, but.. I run Windows in VM without net access. Well... most of the time :)
A buffalo soldier, a dread-like rasta !
Easee dread :) It's sad I know, but at times necessary. Hey it can always get worse, more and more people have to run Vista bloat, with another antivirus and firewall offering, AND with defender on top (lol, seen plenty of that around). Add another 60 processes and you have fan club of utterly useless, 'look ma' 3D with TAB. And 'look dad', I'm even less protected than before because the attack surface is now Ultimate Huge! Typical :)
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Marc Greiner wrote:
Question: how did the virus on the installation disk of the program your company bought infect the network ? Was it on a bootable CD?
the Monkey came on a floppy disk, it required booting because the inertial navigation system software came encrypted. Thus there was no way to avoid it, only catch and halt it. We isolated the system immediately and cleaning was difficult, but easier than cleaning the fielded machines if the inertial navigation system had been deployed in the field -- the results would have been devastating. The other infection came in email from the head office, to my boss, so he opened it. You can't expect bosses to know everything you do, nor your clients, etc. You share your computer with everyone on your network, from your bosses, to HR, to accounting, to wiring techs. You have no idea their habits, and then their customer bases, and home offices. Viruses spread because 90% of the people don't know what a computer virus is, or how to stop it. I have cleaned uncountable virus programs off friends and business contacts computers. I always carry an anti-virus program with me because more common than hardware failure is virus attacks because the military believes exactly as you do. They are completely safe as long as everyone obeys those simple little rules. Well I clean up the aftermath, or stop it, one or the other. And I am tired of it. This mentality that a few professionals can be safe is too naive. The larger your contact base with the common man, the greater your danger, because they prescribe to your same logic and they have no freakin' idea how they are supposed to do it!
Marc Greiner wrote:
Nowadays, viruses are mainly collecting email addresses, they do not harm the computer as badly as they used to do in the 90s.
WRONG, big wrong! they can harm them more, but in different ways. There are some things that are sent in private emails that are not meant for the public, or your clients. Viruses even email viruses risk breaking that. Imagine emails to your boss going to your clients, imagine client emails going to other clients, imagine company secrets going out broad spectrum on the internet. No, viruses have only changed their weapons, they are not less dangerous. personally, I would rather a computer crash and burn. Backups are easy to restore. recalling emails, or undoing damage to company images, and restoring customer trust, have a value tha
Thanks for all this information, I find it very valuable (and surelly enough others too). Sorry about me being aggravated about antivirus programms, it must be a reaction to all my friends always asking me what antivirus programm do I have installed on my PC, or "Hey, I got a virus, how can I get rid of it?", or "I even got an antivirus programm but still got a virus", "It says it's a worm, what is a worm?", or "Hey, my antivirus told me that YOU sent me a virus!" etc... If only everyone started to spend some time on how not to get so easily infected instead of trying to find the best antivirus...
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Thanks for all this information, I find it very valuable (and surelly enough others too). Sorry about me being aggravated about antivirus programms, it must be a reaction to all my friends always asking me what antivirus programm do I have installed on my PC, or "Hey, I got a virus, how can I get rid of it?", or "I even got an antivirus programm but still got a virus", "It says it's a worm, what is a worm?", or "Hey, my antivirus told me that YOU sent me a virus!" etc... If only everyone started to spend some time on how not to get so easily infected instead of trying to find the best antivirus...
Marc Greiner wrote:
If only everyone started to spend some time on how not to get so easily infected instead of trying to find the best antivirus...
Face it, these are the same people who haven't figured out what causes pregnancies and certain diseases too. They are "safe" no matter what they do every step of the way through life (and then call for help when something bad happens). Get a coke or a free meal for fixing their computer, something they don't think of as "charging" I know a friend who charges in beer (one per hour minimum, tips accepted). Get something for your efforts fixing their computers. And at work get paid to fix them. Nothing beats a good AV. Most are set on maximum thrash to start with. Think of who is installing them! These same guys/gals getting infected all the time. Knowing how to set it up for your needs so you too are protected FROM those same people you are helping, and all the other people who haven't a clue about life on the internet. As with driving, you can be the best driver in the world, absolutely safe in all respects. But it is the OTHER guy you have to watch out for. Same on computers, even if you are absolutely safe, you are sharing the world with a whole bunch of idiots, and believe me the universe is very adept at making idiots. Stay safe, get an AV, install it and set it up knowledgeably, don't turn off anything you can spare, turn on the detail stuff when your computer is dreaming about electric sheep. :) Be safe without loss of your time.
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Dare I say it, my laptop's NAV *ugh* subscription is about to run out and I'm looking for something that requires less then 80% of the system resources to run in it's place. What's anyone's experience with other AV and internet security apps? Thanks.
I'm largely language agnostic
After a while they all bug me :doh:
I've been using AVG for a few years now and have had no issues with it. I use the free version because I dont want/need the other features they have available. http://free.grisoft.com[^]
~ballistikx
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ESET 4 sure - it has the credentials consistently over time. http://www.nod32.com.au[^]
I use AVG free.
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Dare I say it, my laptop's NAV *ugh* subscription is about to run out and I'm looking for something that requires less then 80% of the system resources to run in it's place. What's anyone's experience with other AV and internet security apps? Thanks.
I'm largely language agnostic
After a while they all bug me :doh:
I have been using Grisoft's AVG anti-virus *free* edition for years. I am very happy with it. http://free.grisoft.com
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We use AVG and Zone Alarm at home, and haven't had any problems.
Yeah and use spybot as the anti-spyware program
Jwalant Natvarlal SonejiBE IT, India
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Dare I say it, my laptop's NAV *ugh* subscription is about to run out and I'm looking for something that requires less then 80% of the system resources to run in it's place. What's anyone's experience with other AV and internet security apps? Thanks.
I'm largely language agnostic
After a while they all bug me :doh:
I've used Avira Antivir for a while. Its quite lightweight (until it tries to updates itself), and the price is right for the personal edition. http://www.av-comparatives.org/[^] has useful reviews.
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Dare I say it, my laptop's NAV *ugh* subscription is about to run out and I'm looking for something that requires less then 80% of the system resources to run in it's place. What's anyone's experience with other AV and internet security apps? Thanks.
I'm largely language agnostic
After a while they all bug me :doh:
I'm using BitDefender and I'm finally happy with it. I'm saying "finally" because 'till now I just couldn't make it work correctly on Vista. Now it works great on both XP and Vista, it doesn't bother with annoying things... just works! Before this I've used the free version of AVG also on Vista. I don't have any complaints on this either but it lacks configurations (free! remember?!) and as I already had a BitDefender license waiting for a good version to come out I just dropped it. Earlier experiences... NAV -> Is way less resource expensive than it's previous "brothers" but still it's heavy. McAfee -> Never gave it a 2nd chance since it screwed my HD 4 or 5 years ago Cheers, Alex
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Dare I say it, my laptop's NAV *ugh* subscription is about to run out and I'm looking for something that requires less then 80% of the system resources to run in it's place. What's anyone's experience with other AV and internet security apps? Thanks.
I'm largely language agnostic
After a while they all bug me :doh:
I've used AVG's free antivirus on about a dozen computers for the last year or so. Never had a problem with it and unlike SAV or MAV it's really light weight.
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Dare I say it, my laptop's NAV *ugh* subscription is about to run out and I'm looking for something that requires less then 80% of the system resources to run in it's place. What's anyone's experience with other AV and internet security apps? Thanks.
I'm largely language agnostic
After a while they all bug me :doh: