Antivirus is 'completely wasted money'
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Rajesh, I was like you way back when. Ran AV on every computer, diligently updated, diligently answered all the annoying dialogs, diligently forked over hundreds of dollars a year for a piece of software that used resources and never told me anything I didn't already know. I'm not arrogant, I've just been around the block and know when "Bob's Fantastic Toolbar!" is dodgy out. Then one day, after about the fifth time Windows told me to disable an AV while installing X, I uninstalled my AV and never reinstalled it. Never had a problem since. If you don't feel comfortable without an AV then fine, go ahead and keep using one. But don't tell the rest of us that we have to use one.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
Stopped that long ago without problems, it is just a matter of being savvy enough to not do things that would harm my machine.
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Rajesh, I was like you way back when. Ran AV on every computer, diligently updated, diligently answered all the annoying dialogs, diligently forked over hundreds of dollars a year for a piece of software that used resources and never told me anything I didn't already know. I'm not arrogant, I've just been around the block and know when "Bob's Fantastic Toolbar!" is dodgy out. Then one day, after about the fifth time Windows told me to disable an AV while installing X, I uninstalled my AV and never reinstalled it. Never had a problem since. If you don't feel comfortable without an AV then fine, go ahead and keep using one. But don't tell the rest of us that we have to use one.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
I think anti-virus serves two purposes. One is to protect people that don't know any better. My mother is a teacher and I had a look at the receptionists computer at her school. When I hit the expand arrow, the system tray damn near bounced off the start button. Non techie people just don't know enough NOT to click that link. The second is to protect me from morons like that receptionist. Flash drives are the worst in my experience. Unfortunately there are circumstances where I do need to transfer files from different machines using a flash drive and there is no way of not "clicking" on autorun.inf when you put a flash drive in. While I have never managed to get a virus on my PC, and I actually tried to infect a copy of outlook in a VM once, but still failed, the number of times I've popped a flash drive into my laptop and NOD has popped up saying "This here fella's a bit of a moron, Want me to make everything better?" is well worth the $30 / year I pay for it.
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mav.northwind wrote:
Can you really say that you know what your machine does whenever the disk LED lites up or your network connection shows traffic? Perhaps anti-virus software developers don't know either in some cases, but I, for my part, know that they know a lot more about how malware works than I do, so I try to keep my signatures up-to-date.
No offense mav, but that sounds a lot like superstition to me...
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
No offense taken :) But I'd rather call it some kind of faith. The faith that the experts creating AV software are as good in their job as others are in their particular area. Since AV software isn't my core business I really don't know why I should know every new threat some dickhead half way 'round the globe came up with. It's enough for me to know that there are people who get paid full time to deal with these things... Why do people insist on not relying on a third party for an additional layer of security?
Regards, mav -- Black holes are the places where God divided by 0...
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Rajesh, I was like you way back when. Ran AV on every computer, diligently updated, diligently answered all the annoying dialogs, diligently forked over hundreds of dollars a year for a piece of software that used resources and never told me anything I didn't already know. I'm not arrogant, I've just been around the block and know when "Bob's Fantastic Toolbar!" is dodgy out. Then one day, after about the fifth time Windows told me to disable an AV while installing X, I uninstalled my AV and never reinstalled it. Never had a problem since. If you don't feel comfortable without an AV then fine, go ahead and keep using one. But don't tell the rest of us that we have to use one.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
For people who simply don't click on bad links how do you really know the link isn't bad? There are tons of exploits in all browsers and there probably always will be. Don't forget infection via USB thumb drive is the social networking of virus infection. You plug your USB device into say a shared laptop/machine to do a demo or presentation, maybe you're at a net cafe to copy some files.. USB auto start is a significant attack vector you probably haven't even considered. The cost of AV is next to nothing, in terms of both computer speed and money for AV these days. When I say the performance cost is next to nothing I'm not talking about bloated crap like Norton/McAfee if that's all you've ever used. There are so many free (but still decent) AV solutions there isn't really a monetary cost either. If the cost is practically 0 why would you not do it?
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No offense taken :) But I'd rather call it some kind of faith. The faith that the experts creating AV software are as good in their job as others are in their particular area. Since AV software isn't my core business I really don't know why I should know every new threat some dickhead half way 'round the globe came up with. It's enough for me to know that there are people who get paid full time to deal with these things... Why do people insist on not relying on a third party for an additional layer of security?
Regards, mav -- Black holes are the places where God divided by 0...
mav.northwind wrote:
But I'd rather call it some kind of faith. The faith that the experts creating AV software are as good in their job as others are in their particular area.
I'll give you that.
mav.northwind wrote:
Why do people insist on not relying on a third party for an additional layer of security?
I went years without locking my doors. I don't mean "at night", i mean never - not when i left for work, not when i left for the weekend... and nothing bad ever came of it. Of course, i moved to an area with a higher crime rate and less folks around to back me up if something happened... and now i lock my doors even in the daytime, even when i'm home, even when i'm walking around with a 12" knife in one hand and a 3' wrench in the other... er, well, the first two scenarios. I think that pretty much parallels where a good many of us are on AV software - we use it when we don't trust the environment we're in; whether that's an untrusted network or a trial installation of unknown software. We'll use it knowing that at best it'll only catch the slow and the stupid intruder, but hoping that that's enough. Otherwise, it's just an unnecessary hindrance.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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mav.northwind wrote:
If you don't use antivirus software then you must be either quite naive or rather ignorant.
Then explain how many techies get by fine without anti-virus.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
What you're saying is partially like saying that it's fine not to have car insurance because you haven't been in an accident and you're confident in your ability to always avoid accidents. Well, fortunately (or unfortunately for you), society has dictated that it is not permissible or responsible for you to have that kind of confidence, and therefore you must buy insurance. The thing about virii that differ from car accidents is that you may not even know you're infected. You may think that you aren't infected because, "oh, no single process is using 100% of my CPU when I'm not running anything" or "ads don't randomly pop up here and there on my desktop for no reason" but the truth is that not everything is so invasive and obnoxious.
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Rajesh, I was like you way back when. Ran AV on every computer, diligently updated, diligently answered all the annoying dialogs, diligently forked over hundreds of dollars a year for a piece of software that used resources and never told me anything I didn't already know. I'm not arrogant, I've just been around the block and know when "Bob's Fantastic Toolbar!" is dodgy out. Then one day, after about the fifth time Windows told me to disable an AV while installing X, I uninstalled my AV and never reinstalled it. Never had a problem since. If you don't feel comfortable without an AV then fine, go ahead and keep using one. But don't tell the rest of us that we have to use one.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
Hi Paul, I am not only a member of CP, but I am a member of ASAP[^] (spywareinfo, bleepingcomputer). I've been guiding people to get their infected computers back up and running. In such cases, I cannot just use an antivirus. I will have to use professional tools, which are designed specifically to this purpose. An example can be HijackThis. I can run a computer without an antivirus with no problems and having been into ASAP for years, I can tell that I will know the internals of viruses, how they infect a computer, ways to remove them, etc., way better than a lot of people around here. But you guys mistook me for preaching others to use an antivirus. I know it clearly that antivirus is a precaution and not a cure. However, the primary reason why I use an antivirus is to scan a thumbdrive or a disc that has been used with other computers as well.
Paul Watson wrote:
If you don't feel comfortable without an AV then fine, go ahead and keep using one. But don't tell the rest of us that we have to use one.
I don't remember saying that you have to use one. I just said that I use one. Correct me if I am wrong.
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero .·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·. Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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Rajesh, I was like you way back when. Ran AV on every computer, diligently updated, diligently answered all the annoying dialogs, diligently forked over hundreds of dollars a year for a piece of software that used resources and never told me anything I didn't already know. I'm not arrogant, I've just been around the block and know when "Bob's Fantastic Toolbar!" is dodgy out. Then one day, after about the fifth time Windows told me to disable an AV while installing X, I uninstalled my AV and never reinstalled it. Never had a problem since. If you don't feel comfortable without an AV then fine, go ahead and keep using one. But don't tell the rest of us that we have to use one.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
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http://news.zdnet.com/2424-1009_22-202297.html[^] "A better way of dealing with the unknown is to use whitelists--where only authorized or approved software can execute" I don't think it is so easy to do, but probably is the only way to go. jhaga
How to earn $100/month.
There are products that let you do this, especially for safe webbrowsing. DefenseWall comes to mind, and is well-regarded. However, I do recommend you use an antivirus software as well. Since viruses often hit security holes to propagate, you will still be vulnerable due to security holes in the whitelisting software itself and software it can't control. Furthermore, extensive testing of products like DW shows that some Trojans and viruses inevitably break out of the sandbox. The basic fact is that antivirus software is affordable, and can stop these things before the even begin to become a problem. Long story short, you can use whitelisting and sandboxing to effectively deal with threats. However, antivirus software is still irreplaceable for... here it comes... stopping viruses! (And some are even free, so what's big deal?)
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There are products that let you do this, especially for safe webbrowsing. DefenseWall comes to mind, and is well-regarded. However, I do recommend you use an antivirus software as well. Since viruses often hit security holes to propagate, you will still be vulnerable due to security holes in the whitelisting software itself and software it can't control. Furthermore, extensive testing of products like DW shows that some Trojans and viruses inevitably break out of the sandbox. The basic fact is that antivirus software is affordable, and can stop these things before the even begin to become a problem. Long story short, you can use whitelisting and sandboxing to effectively deal with threats. However, antivirus software is still irreplaceable for... here it comes... stopping viruses! (And some are even free, so what's big deal?)
NimitySSJ wrote:
so what's big deal?)
That there soon will be to many viruses for any software to handle. I agree that antivirus software is still important for most people. In the future I would like to see software that would let me EASILY control which programs can execute on my computer. I use hundreds of programs and maintaining a whitelist is not practical. jhaga
How to earn $1000/month.
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Rajesh, I was like you way back when. Ran AV on every computer, diligently updated, diligently answered all the annoying dialogs, diligently forked over hundreds of dollars a year for a piece of software that used resources and never told me anything I didn't already know. I'm not arrogant, I've just been around the block and know when "Bob's Fantastic Toolbar!" is dodgy out. Then one day, after about the fifth time Windows told me to disable an AV while installing X, I uninstalled my AV and never reinstalled it. Never had a problem since. If you don't feel comfortable without an AV then fine, go ahead and keep using one. But don't tell the rest of us that we have to use one.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
Paul Watson wrote:
If you don't feel comfortable without an AV then fine, go ahead and keep using one. But don't tell the rest of us that we have to use one.
I concur with this. I've seen viruses attack systems on occasion - and they've gotten noticed by the A/V software right after the infection got too serious to fix without a rebuild of the system. However, I've not seen this happen on any systems that lived behind a good router unless the users were browsing to questionable websites and downloading payloads they should not be. I haven't (in years) seen a payload come across e-mail. Personally I think the whole virus industry is overblown. Yes, it *can* happen, but with decent security measures in place I've never run into much of a problem. My home network has been up for 6 years on this particular ISP and I have seen little or no indication of anything approaching a virus attack in all that time - and I have 4 systems on this LAN all the time. I just use AVG free to scan the e-mails - and I can't remember a single time where I've seen anything get noticed by even that as yet. I had one friend who had a BAD infestation on his machine. Found out that his kids were browsing porn web sites and downloading anything they could find. They asked for it. -CB :)