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.
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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 :)