[hijack]
I went through this when I was trying to install Firefox on a new Windows 8.1 machine…Internet Explorer refused to go to the download page. I was able to download the appropriate file on another computer and transfer it over; the installation was a success. The virus scanner was McAfee, the streaming pile of intrusive shit that came pre-installed. (It’s using Norton now, and everything has been fine so far.)
[/hijack]
I know I’m a couple days late to this party, but it goes like this. Run a computer without anti-virus for 3 years. Install the most highly recommended anti-virus program available, run a scan, 0 viruses found. Uninstall anti-virus. Repeat every 3 years.
Remember when viruses made the news? Those were mostly worms, and they installed themselves on unpatched machines, so I never had a problem on my personal computers. Now firewalls are ubiquitous and computers patch themselves. I don’t really see viruses anymore, I see malware, which means the user downloaded something dumb and clicked “yes” on the installer without realizing what they were doing. I don’t fault my parents for running anti-virus, but it’s not a requirement for everyone.
I agree. Now, my Windows experience is more from about a decade ago, XP era, and I know things have gotten better, but the poster said nary a virus in 20 years. I dealt with viruses practically weekly with XP, whether it’s my computer, a computer at work, or a friend’s computer. Add to that, my brother whom I shared the house with, would be bringing in and de-virusing his girlfriend’s family members’ computers on a seemingly continual basis. It was enough that I had “HiJack This!” (along with some other AdAware and some other anti-malware programs, but HiJack This! was the best one for me to figure out just what in holy hell was going on) on a thumb drive on my keychain because I was encountering them so much. This was on computers with anti-spyware software, without anti-spyware software, behind firewalls, not behind firewalls, etc. It is eventually what led me to changing operating systems, because I just got tired of dealing with this shit.
I don’t think you really get to complain if you were using the free edition (though I also switched from AVG last month, for similar reasons.)
Sometimes you die a hero, and sometimes you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Sounds like AVG crossed that line
Holy Hell, what a nightmare. I’d missed that one when it came out. As the story says, none of what that bit of nastyware does is science fiction, but it’s a hell of an escalation in tactics. I am all of a sudden very glad that servers don’t have soundcards and microphones installed, and USB drives are rarely used.
Again: Holy Hell, what a nightmare.
So, anybody want to roll the dice on the SDMB right now without antivirus? Strange timing, this.
Well, since I’m on nothing but Linux boxes w/NoScript. I’m doing just that (there’s no useful a/v for Linux, anyway).
Am I the only one to think of Elton John on reading the thread title?
*Goodbye, AVG
Cos you never asked me to install
A piece of software
That didn’t improve my browser, at all.
It crawled out of the woodwork
And it sat atop the page
Which set me on the treadmill
To remove your little plague
And it seems to me you’ve had your day
But that now you must be binned
Now I don’t know who to turn to
When viruses come in
And I would have liked to have kept you
But now I’ve blown my lid
Your product’s bummed out long before
I wish it ever did.
Going on was tough
The toughest thing I ever had to do
Where can I find free anti-virus
Now I’ve finally dumped you?
Even when I tried
To completely uninstall
You just came back again
I couldn’t dump you at all
And it seems to me you’ve had your day
But that now you must be binned
Now I don’t know who to turn to
When viruses come in
And I would have liked to have kept you
But now I’ve blown my lid
Your product’s bummed out long before
I wish it ever did.
Goodbye, AVG
I thought you were the best, but now no more
Why did you have to break our trust
And leave me oh so sore?
And it seems to me you’ve had your day
But that now you must be binned
Now I don’t know who to turn to
When viruses come in
And I would have liked to have kept you
But now I’ve blown my lid
Your product’s bummed out long before
I wish it ever did.*
applause
It’s doable, but it’s a hackish mess using both Wine and native Windows libraries that I would not want to support. I’d be more inclined to make my browser lie about being IE and see if anything breaks.
Plus, it’s arguably illegal, as Microsoft claims that Internet Explorer is only for “Genuine” copies of Windows, which Microrsoft says do not include Wine or Linux.
I can agree with this. My current PC dates back to the 1990s, in the “fourteen new handles and ten new brushes” sense; each upgrade included at least one component from the previous machine, even if it was just the floppy drive. In that time I’ve gone from 95 Plus to 98SE to XP SP2-SP3 and Windows 7 and the only active anti-virus I’ve used is Defender / MSE, and then only over the last few years. I’ve periodically downloaded trial versions of Norton and run them once and then got rid of them.
It’s impossible to prove a negative, although of course the flip side is that it’s impossible for people running anti-virus to prove that their machines aren’t riddled with viruses either. There are several examples in this thread where anti-virus did no good. I am of the opinion that in the last eighteen years or so I never once picked up a virus, or if I did it was utterly ineffectual. I base this on a mixture of (a) Process Explorer (b) the overall performance of my PC (c) the lack of suspicious activity when I’m not connected to the internet (d) the lack of any suspicious Amazon orders or interactions with my bank (e) the lack of any overt effects or obvious degradation in performance that cannot be explained otherwise.
I relied mostly on passive defenses. I’ve been a long-term Netscape - Seamonkey - Firefox user, with Adblock and Noscript and Flashblock. I’ve always used web-based email. I essentially run Windows with a mass of open source and free applications plus a small number of professional applications. Once you eliminate the attack vectors, what is left? Most tales of being hit by a virus involve opening crappy email attachments; clicking on a pop-up window; installing rubbish that has been bundled with other rubbish; taking your machine to the International Space Station; using USB sticks that had formerly been used by Iran’s nuclear programme; etc.
As for the chap above who had viruses on “my computer, a computer at work, or a friend’s computer … my brother whom I shared the house with [would bring in] and de-virusing his girlfriend’s family members’ computers on a seemingly continual basis”, remember the bit in Touching the Void where the chap has to cut the rope on his friend, because otherwise they would both have gone over the edge? There comes a time when you have to accept that other people are a continual burden, and that they will never improve as long as you continue to help them, and that in the end you will end up exhausted and they will still require help.
Or remember the bit in Toy Story III where they hold hands in the face of certain death? In real life you do not have a movie camera pointed at you. If you go into the furnace, if you and your friends all go into the furnace, you’re just a puff of smoke and no-one will know you ever existed. You might as well have never been born. Woody should have kicked the other toys away and dragged himself out and then he would have the rest of his life to drink himself silly and perhaps set up some kind of memorial fund.
You know, the drink has started to take hold so I’m not finished yet. I remember that as a kid all my friends had a fetish for running defrag all the time. To speed up the PC. They say there watching defrag churn away, mentally wanking themselves off at the thought of how fast their machine would be when it had finished.
It struck me that they spent hours running defrag, and in that time they might have done something else; in the end it was just a time drain. I’m not saying that that consequences of an infection could not be disastrous, it’s just seems to me that anti-virus is pointless. The kind of people likely to suffer from viruses are doomed, and there’s no point helping them. They will just run into problems in the future. As I have so eloquently put it in the paragraphs above, the weak are a burden on the strong. Pancake, or pyramid? You decide.
As for Linux, my opinion is that the kind of person likely to have trouble with viruses is going to enjoy Linux for the week it takes for something to go wrong, at which point they will follow some instructions on the internet and end up bricking their machine because they edited Xorg.conf and now it doesn’t work.
Linux is fundamentally a sophisticated, stable text-based multi-user professional operating system with a variety of graphical shells; unless you’re capable of installing and managing it from the command line you’re going to run into problems trying to manage it with the GUI. And if you’re a woman or over the age of about 28 you aren’t going to enjoy the support forums. The body burns adrenaline before it burns fat, but which would you rather read? Molten adrenaline, I choose molten adrenaline.
I take this back. It’s still a pretty hackish mess to install using Wine, but Microsoft has been so kind as to release freely available VM images that are set up to run IE 6, 7, 8, and 9. Doing it that way is both legal and probably would not cause any problems.
(There are more recent versions at http://modern.ie, but they licensing agreement is a bit ambiguous on whether you can use it just for making a website work.)
Also, IE6 does not have the “Genuine Windows” problem.
That was archive worthy, Dead Cat.
What I find annoying is the occasional panel that pops up that says “Did you feel that? AVG just did something that made your computer better etc.” Please don’t treat me like a mark, AVG. Just stay in the background and keep me thinking I’m thoroughly protected.
I hate bloatware, viruses, and all that crap. I am considering just switching to linux. Of course that’s probably a myth.
All Antiviruses do that. They can’t really not do that, as you have to have the option to undo what they did if they made a mistake. But if it bothers you, most AVs have a Silent or Gaming mode. Enable that, and you’ll never see anything.
Just don’t complain when a program you download from the Internet to change your start screen won’t start and completely locked up where you can’t do anything about it even if you uninstall the antivirus. You dared to have a program that messes with basic startup files–that must malware.
BTW, even if you don’t like traditional antivirus, it’s silly to run without zero-day protection. Threatfire is still out there, but you’ll have to Google for it. Malwarebytes AntiExploit is probably better, even though it only protects specific programs.
Or you can just run a traditional antivirus–all but Avira AntiVir contain zero-day protection–because, as we all know, traditional antivirus by itself is not all that useful.
It’s not a myth: I have never got one instance of malware/viruses etc. through running Linux quite unprotected — I do check with RKHunter, Clamav, and chkrootkit every now and again, mainly for root kits which are just possible with Linux; but mainly as a courtesy for poor old Windows users.
However, the disadvantages of Linux may outweigh not having to do the Dance of Maintenance Windows demands; in the end I found that running Spybot, any random anti-malware program, continually updating definitions, running checks, defragging etc. etc. was becoming the computer experience instead of accessorizing it. Linux and Mac may leave you feeling empty if that stuff gives the welcome illusion of accomplishment.
All antivirus programs flash merit panels? Funny, I never noticed that from other antivirus apps. And I wouldn’t install anything to change my Start screen because I have no reason to. I take it you are bemoaning a past bad experience with web surfing?
Thanks, but I’m not sure - I didn’t spend long knocking it up so it doesn’t scan that well - mind you, nor does the original I suppose :).
Personally, I’m still using AVG (the free version) and I don’t find it intrusive, but that’s the only security I have - I haven’t even backed up my hard drive, so I’m hardly a fount of knowledge on this topic. On the other hand, I can’t think of anything on my laptop that I’d be devastated about losing, so it’s a low priority. Really need to get round to it one of these days.