I used to be cavalier about anti-virus software. Not anymore, though.
I think InvidiousCourgette will be heading for a big fall. Yes you can take precautions which makes you safer, like having sex only if you know every one of your partners partner, but it will not give you the same level of protection of that and a condom. Or you can take the 100% route, abstance, just disconnect from the net - it would probabally be better for the rest of us if you do.
I am not running antivirus software on my computer. PC users would agree that running the antivirus software of two years ago won’t protect you against today’s viruses, yes? Well, antivirus software exists for the Mac but until the first OS X viruses actually appear I don’t see the point of it.
Under OS 9 (including the “Classic” environment) I still run the old Disinfectant INIT and WormGuard — OS 9 is a very low-risk environment for viruses but a tiny handful do exist.
On my old computer, no. On this one I’ve got Norton Anti Virus, Spybot Search and Destroy and Adaware.
I’m glad I do-I’ve had three trojans in the past couple months. Nothing major-they were easily taken care of-(I suspect it came from the Bad Porn Community), but I’m glad Norton was there.
The only complaint I have about it is the little "Norton is waiting for scan on “forum.html” or whatever that keeps popping up. But I can live with it.
On my Macs, no. I have a .mac membership so I did download Virex (which comes with .mac) but I don’t really use it. Until there is an OS X virus scare, (as AHunter says) there doesn’t seem much point. And there’s been plenty of time for an OS X virus scare to develop already, so I’m not exactly sweating bullets (not that I’m saying it won’t happen . . .).
I didn’t have virus protection on the PC for ages (no problems), but when I got a new one, I decided I’d better. It doesn’t really pick much up (I don’t do a lot of adventuresome surfing on the PC), but better to have it than not.
I only pick up my email from the Mac, with the exception of web mail, which I will check if I’m on the PC. I don’t download or open anything, though.
I have AVG antivirus on my computer currently, but I may uninstall it because it’s yet to find anything.
I’ve never had a virus on this computer, and on my last computer (which died due to hardware failure) I had one virus - the MS Blaster virus.
(Unless you count all the programs that anti-virus thought were viruses, such as the Cain password cracker and the Netbus remote administration tool.)
Yep, and it runs every night after I’m in bed. For a while I was getting spam with virus attachments (3-4 a day for weeks), most of which were caught by my ISP. Some slipped through and were caught by AVG. I’ve been to sites that would’ve installed a virus even if I didn’t click on anything if it weren’t for my anti-virus software. Now that I use Firefox, that’s pretty much a thing of the past.
On the other hand, my husband once got Cool Web Search on his machine simply because he typed in a URL incorrectly. He had to reformat. He recently had to reformat again because of some other problem that we never did completely figure out. He doesn’t run anti-virus software, and he uses IE.
Spyware & malware. Norton helps a bit for them. Some of them are damn hard to get rid of. If you don’t use anti-virus, for gods sake at least have Spywareblaster installed. No, instal it- or a similar trusted & reputable program- anyway.
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm#products
Its only purpose is to prevent you from accidentally forwarding a Windows virus to a Windows-using colleague/friend.
Personally, I say that if they choose to use an inherently insecure system, they deserve what they get. 
Sophos researched the numbers. There are 97,467 (give or take ) viruses that affect windows based machines.There are 68 that affect Macs. Most of those are more than a decade old and don’t affect OSX.
(Information from the March 2005 Macworld Magazine page 55)
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- How do you know which sites online are trustable and which are not? Can I have a copy of that list?..
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- Ummm, no it isn’t. Running AV on constant-scan filters all incoming items and stops known problem programs/scripts usually before they can be executed at all. Unless you were talking about the free, online downloadable scanner, which (in principal) is a joke.
- Running AV is simlar to the reason you keep a spare tire in your car, and not at home in the garage because “you’re a good driver and you weren’t expecting to get a flat tire”.
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Don’t renew Norton, use AVG! My buddy’s pc was having fits and his copy of Norton’s found no problems. I got him to install AVG and it found something immediately. I think it was a Bagel variant. Anyway, it is FREE! didn’t I mention there was no cost? Gratis? Anyway, I’m a believer now. I used McAfee for a while but it was having some issues that I could never resolve. So it’s gone.
I also have Zone alarm firewall (free!), I run Adware and Spybot and SpwareBlaster. All free. Good luck.
Also there is Avast which is a free AV program as well. I have not used AVG, but have heard both are about the same, and both are good. I haven’t tried AVG, mainly because I had no problems or issues w/ Avast, so I contine to install Avast because I know what to expect.
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- As I have seen it, if any particular antivirus works well on any particular computer is a crap shoot. It might, it might not. You did tend to see more problems with Win98/ME, but now most of the big-name programs have free trials anyway, so you can see if it’s going to go well or not. Kaspersky is one of the bigger-name ones, gets good reviews in most tests–but their installer fails on a lot of computers for some reason.
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- And I will concede to Bill H. and others who don’t bother: most of the reason I run AV is because of other people who use my computers when I’m not around. I used to have ZoneAlarm installed also, but not to block incoming stuff, I got a router for that. I only ran ZA occasionally to make certain that no uninvited programs already on my own computer were accessing the net.
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I stopped using virus scanners a few years ago, and I’ve never had a virus problem (Windows XP). I do run adware scanners religiously though. I think the lines between viruses and adware have been blurring however. Most anti-virus packages still don’t search for adware, though, due to sticky legal issues about what adware is legitimate or not.
I’ve always followed a few simple rules to keep myself virus free:
Never use an “integrated” email suite (like Outlook, MSN, or AOL), and always set up my email (Eudora, or recently Mozilla) to receive as ‘plain text’ with a separate attachment. I also have a ‘white list’ only email so any attachments are ones that I’m sure about.
Never use Internet Explorer. Use Mozilla or Firefox.
Run a firewall program.
I do a semi-annual backup of my files, and a reinstall of windows to essentially ‘tune up’. Windows, even when perfectly healthy, turns into a snarled mess after a while and a reinstall is almost always beneficial.
Lately and ultimately, I’ve finally said screw it all, and changed to Linux (Suse 9.1), and have never had a worry, and no longer have to deal with any reinstall or maintenance.
I run the free-for-personal-use AntiVir at home on my WinXP box, but I might scrap it. Anti-virus software definitely creates a noticable slowdown, and my aging, craptastic system could do without it.
Given my combination of circumstances and software I don’t have much to worry about. I browse with Firefox (through a Privoxy ad-blocker), I read my e-mail with Thunderbird, I sit behind a Linux firewall. Those things alone will protect me from 99.998% of the viruses out there. I recently set up ClamAV to filter e-mail viruses on my employer’s mail server and may do so for my personal mail server as well.
I ran for years without any anti-virus software and never once got a virus. That’s probably because I’ve been behind a Linux firewall for most of those years and because I never used Outlook/Outlook Express for e-mail.
And, who can we trust? We can’t even trust Microsoft, seeing as how they have distributed the Concept and Wazzu viruses on their own CD-ROMs.
Oops… hit “Post” too soon…
For those who feel they can suss out viruses in their email and not need to install AV software, how do you plan to protect yourselves against worms? Unlike viruses, worms don’t need your help to run on your computer - they just slither in through whatever port (eg: telnet, ftp, ssh, etc) happens to be open and then they come to life.
One factor that’s being overlooked here with regard to people not getting viruses in email all that much any more is that ISPs are taking aggressive action and treating their customers’ email to the same sort of antivirus protection used on corporate email servers rather than simply passing emails from Point A to Point B.
Lessee what I got at home…
Norton AV
AdAware SE
Spybot S&D
XP SP2 Firewall
Too many scary situations in the past to fully trust my luck (and darn tootin’ I turn 'er off I’m gonna leave the system unattended for a long while. This machine does NOT need to be available to do squat when I’m not around).
gotpasswords wrote
That is an amusing story.
But…
a) it’s almost ten years old.
b) the releases mentioned were minmal distributions.
c) the actual destruction caused by the Wazzu virus at least is that it adds the word wazzu to some of your words. Annoying, but hardly catastrophic.
Microsoft deserves their reputation for lack of security, but they’ve gotten much better.