The OP actually hasn’t commented since starting this thread.
I use emails, click hyperlinks, download stuff (including porn).
I haven’t had an issue for about 3 years.
You just have to be smart about it.
I don’t run antivirus on my home gaming PC, never have. When browsing I do have NoScript and Adblock, and I run the browser inside Sandboxie.
However the disclaimer is I am a professional computer guy, don’t try this at home.
I run a Windows box, open emails, surf to unknown sites, don’t use specific virus protection (we do have a firewall), and I only rarely catch anything. Rarely being maybe once every 4 years.
Ditto, except for me it’s only been 4½ years.
My personal machine a vista home 64 bit, no AV software installed since built 3 years ago. I am the only user, I am a computer guy and have excellent web discipline. No problems.
As a guy who sees virused machines all the time (computer shop owner) there are alot of people who run across something every few years. A few of my customers are in every 4-6 months but they are also some of your lowest common denominator types, very un computer saavy, often appear intoxicated, history full of porn and warez sites, and 3 different torrent programs autostarting.
Some people have a talent to screw up a computer with just a few keystrokes. Those are the ones that need AV covering their backsides.
This is a very interesting thread. I had assumed I was foolish for not running AV software, in spite of the fact that I haven’t ever downloaded a virus. I assumed almost everyone but me is running AV, but now I see that’s not the case, and the reason I haven’t been infected is because I am smart about where I go and what I download. Huh. Very interesting about the “walled gardens” effect.
Back in the dark ages (1994-7), I had a coworker who rarely came to the lab, thank God; I shall call him Kevin. For some reason he was the boss’ pet; when he could be arsed to come in, the boss would make one of us leave her post for Lord Kevin.
The rest of us used the antivirus religiously, because sometimes we had to go to one of the university’s public labs and sometimes those were infected. A few times, the antivirus did catch a bug in a diskette which had been used in said public labs; the bug got zipped, work got done. Every time Lord Kevin came in, his disks would be infected.
The only time we got an infection, it was from a diskette His Lordship had brought. He didn’t infect one of the three terminals, oh no: he got all three. When we inspected the misbehaving computers, we noticed that he had switched the antivirus off. His reasoning was “but the antivirus slows things down!” “having to clean the three PowerMacs slows things down worse!”
From that day on, he became known as Thatidiotkevin, said as a single word.
TLDR: depending on where you go, you’ll never so much as see a virus. But people who take their computer whoring need to put a condom on it or they will become known as Thatidiotkevin.
I used to run with no antivirus. Then I got bit hard by a Flash 0-day exploit in a legit ad-service-provider on a legit site.
So now I run NoScript and the appropriate local system antivirus, on every computer.
My household has Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, because I am the alpha geek. =P
No. Look, let us take the whole “Mac vs PC” debate out of this.
Even legit websites can lead you to get infected by malware thru the ads which they have little control over. Even our friends over at Snopes had pop-under ads that were infected with malware. The same appears to have occurred here, although it’s been hard to pin down.
If you are running a Windows machine, get AV and anti-malware. Yes, if you just use the free stuff that comes with the latest version, and religiously get updates from Windows, you should be OK.
Being smart (and single-user) just means you don’t have to spend money and run a top-notch suite like Kaspersky.
You still need at least free protection and to run updates before surfing.
I have not used anti-virus software in about 10 years. Yes, I run Windows. XPSP3. I have not encountered a virus in all that time. Windows is not as vulnerable as the Mac fans allege. I install the monthly updates. Firefox is very good at warning of threatening sites, and I’ve learned a lot about what’s safe on the net and what’s not.
I do run Spyware Blaster, and NoScript. About every three months I run through one of the free virus checkers like ESET. They’ve never found anything. We live in a society that thrives on empty threats of terrorists, killer weather and cancer-causing foods. It’s hype to get you to toe the line, watch TV, and buy organic products. I would not be surprised to find that the virus threat is leveraged by Apple and Unix in order to push more product.
ETA: when I was running anti-virus, I only received one virus from 1989 until 2002 or so. It did no damage and was easily removed by McAfee. In fact, McAfee is a lot harder to purge than most viruses.
Thats because the infected ads are being passed via a legit ad network. The advertisers are always on guard for this kinda stuff, unfortunately, if they get 1000 new ads in a day and 170 virus triggering ones are caught before adding to the ad rotation but one slips through, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of infections can result. Thats why the virus writers do it that way, slipping even .1% through the cracks can infect a huge number of users. Almost all ad providers can be infected this way Google ads for example are safe because google controls all the scripting used in the ads.
Yeah, this. The one and only time I ever caught a virus is when I had a catastrophic crash and had to redownload my antivirus. In that brief period, I didn’t go anywhere iffy - just here, snopes, google, and AVG’s website - but I still managed to catch something pretty nasty that took me weeks to get rid of.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if as many as half the no-AV folks already have active malware infections on their machines that they aren’t even aware of - not all forms of malware announce themselves, or do anything immediately destructive - some of them just sit there quietly performing distributed computing tasks such as DDOS attacks, spamming, cracking, etc.
It’s entirely possible (reasonably likely, even) for an unprotected machine to get quietly compromised, regardless of how carefully you believe you’re treading.
Of course, no AV solution is perfect - but that’s not a reason not to use one - the same criticism could be said of, say, parachutes.
Jesus. Things have really changed. 5 (maybe 10?) years ago, everyone I talked to had antivirus software. I’m running some right now and have not complaints. Years ago, it really slowed my system, but I haven’t noticed it in my last couple of computers.
Maybe I’m being a sucker. It’s not a ton of money, though, maybe $80 per year for peace of mind.
I haven’t had the best luck of finding statistics, but here’s a typical botnet breakdown, by OS:
Scroll down to the graph in question 7. Notice something? The vast majority of affected machines are running XP SP2. Why? Two reasons. One, most people running XP aren’t running automatic updates, especially if they’re running SP2, and two, XP still accounts for roughly 30 percent of all internet connected computers. That’s not 30 percent of Windows computers, that’s 30 percent of all computers on the internet, about on par with Windows 7. That’s a very large chunk of computers running a 10 year old operating system that’s not really being supported anymore by the vendor, full of holes and ancient OS design elements.
I don’t think it’s very likely that someone running Windows 7 with no virus protection will ever get a virus, no matter how careless they are. It’s still, to this day, not being targeted with the same ferocity that XP was and is.
You think you are being clever by continuously repeating this, but if you know what you are doing and how to set it up, this isn’t a problem either.
This is functionally equivalent to saying “I have never got cholera, despite the fact I drink water in 3rd-world countries all the time. Drinking water isn’t as dangerous as people allege. By the way, I totally boil any water before I drink it.”