Have I Compromised My Computer Security ?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, through a combination of poor communication and sheer pigheadedness (long and not too relevant story), we’ve let our antivirus subscription lapse today.

Until a couple of years ago, I was in charge of renewing our AV subscription. I always made sure that it was done well on time. Then, my wife told me that she could get free AV for our home devices through her work. It seemed to work fine, so free protection without the need for renewal, I wasn’t going to complain.

But then, we bought a new PC last month, which came with a one-month McAfee trial AV. I started getting warnings that it would expire in X days at the beginning of the month and told my wife about it. She said that she didn’t quite remember how to install the free AV but she’d look into it (can’t blame her, she did it once 2-3 years ago). I reminded her of the issue on Sunday, with two days to go according to the McAfee dashboard. Her answer was a curt “I know”.

I could see where this was going, so yesterday evening, I decided to put all my new files on our external drive. While I was working on a last one, a message popped up : “Your trial version expires today, what do you want to do ? Accept the risks / renew your subscription”. Well, I was a bit taken aback because it was 9pm, not “tomorrow” yet (I had checked the dashboard a couple of hours before and it clearly said “1 day left”), so I sat there looking at the message for a few moments. Then, I stopped the job I was working on, closed Firefox, ejected the external drive and turned off the computer. All this took less than 5 minutes.

So, my concerns boil down to this :

  • When the message flashed on the screen, was the computer still covered by the trial AV ?
  • If not, how likely is it that its security is compromised ? For the record, I wasn’t browsing any sketchy website (google images, a classical music record label and… this place :D). There were no downloads or streaming going on at the moment the message popped up, but I had downloaded metadata from freedb for a CD I was converting to FLAC a few minutes earlier.

What I find really infuriating, apart from the fact that I didn’t expect this sort of message until today, was that it appeared precisely when my back up external drive was connected to the PC, so the that if the latter is compromised, so is the former. And I was about to finalize to whole thing within the following 30 minutes :mad:.

2

Don’t worry. Just uninstall McAfee.

The inbuilt Microsoft AV is good enough if you back it up by regular - once a month or so or whenever you are concerned - scans with the free version of Malware Bytes

3

Just do a comprehensive virus scan with Windows Defender (if you have Windows 10) or another alternative.

4

Concur - for home use, Windows Defender, plus an ad blocker, plus a generous portion of common sense on what you click on (especially in emails), should be adequate.

5

I’m just adding to the pile but Microsoft’s packaged AV is pretty good these days. In fact, I was watching a tech Youtube person the other day who said the same: he hasn’t been using anything else because Windows (plus common sense) is already doing a good job.

You can pay for extra if you want to, but not doing so isn’t like leaving your front door open.

6

Any time a friend asks me to help out with his or her new computer, I immediately uninstall the free trial of whatever crap anti-virus they install and turn on Windows Defender instead. No problems so far.

If you’re surfing this particular site, either have Adblock or uBlock Origin running or become a member, because this site seems to serve up more malware through ads than other legitimate sites.

Honestly, the free trial of paid software is more dangerous than just having Defender to begin with. It’s not like it will uninstall itself, it will just stop updating, but will keep Defender off (I believe).

Anyway, I think you’re fine. While I have Defender running, the actual amount of malware I actually come across is almost zero. I pretty much never get warnings from it and the scans never turn up anything. I surf a huge variety of sites, but I stay away from warez sites and am careful about any downloads.

7

Ok, thanks, I’ll check Windows Defender tonight !

8

I’m a little sad that AV scare-marketing has users so apprehensive that they assume their little PCs will be immediately gang-raped by hundreds of blackhats, viruses, and Russian trolls.

Yes, you want a little protection. The OS includes it right out of the box, and has for years. Third party antimalware generally offers almost nothing beyond the basic protection already available, except for more advertising and come-ons for upsells. And often significantly reduced system performance. (Symantec, I’m looking at you.)

9

This had me laughing out loud!

Absolutely correct. Viruses are not like water in your plumbing. They are not (generally) just waiting, applying pressure and looking for the millisecond when you don’t have fully-paid-up AV protection running, to ruin your data. Using Windows AV products is usually more than adequate, unless you regularly indulge in dumb behaviors. The last three “paid” AV services I used were far more troublesome than anything I was actually exposed to in the regular course of my activities.

10

As far as needing to shut your computer down as soon as you saw the message, you didn’t need to. It meant expires “today”, as in that calendar day was the last day of protection.

For now, you should be fine uninstalling McAfee, and running with Defender in the short term. Longer term, I’d suggest you look at something like PC Magazine’s Review of the Top Internet Security Suite for 2018. It opens on a handy-dandy chart. You can look at the features compared to your actual needs and see what makes sense in the long run. (It looks like a pop-over page opens over the article. You’ll need to close it.) Please note that Microsoft’s product is not in the Top 10. Based on my experience in the industry, I would say it’s better than nothing, but I’d urge you to look at one of the products listed in the article instead.

11

Two of their Top 10 are Kaspersky products. I wouldn’t install that on YOUR computer.

12

Good lord, no. I meant to say something. Thank you for reminding me. Neil took impartiality too far when he included them, IMO. They have made fairly well reviewed products for years, but under current circumstances all of Kaspersky’s products should be nuked from space.

13

Frankly, I have a hard time trusting PC Magazine (or any other publication or site) that relies on advertising dollars and the good-will of AV providers. I’ve had subscriptions to several of the products listed and have dropped them when the pop-ups promoting “better levels of service” and “discount protection for additional computers” began to irritate me more than the regular ads I encounter browsing (with AdBlock). While there are exceptions, I would definitely think twice about accepting advice from any site of this type.

I run 12 Windows PCs at my home and business. I’ve never had a problem when using Defender on them. I DO have another AV product on the two PCs my wife uses, but that’s only because she’s a bit, er…too trusting.

14

Defender in 8 or 10.

In 7, Defender is NOT AV. It’s called Microsoft Security Essentials there. Defender is anti-malware only.

15

You should probably operate under the assumption that, regardless of whatever commercial anti-virus product you may have purchased and are running on your machine, there’s some risk of compromise. Don’t think of AV software as some impenetrable shield that will always keep you safe from the baddies.

16

This is true as well.

17

Thanks for your replies. I activated Windows Defender yesterday evening.

To be honest, I knew that shutting down the PC as soon as I got the message was an overreaction but, as I said, it’s the fact that it appeared right as I had my back-up external disc plugged in that caused it. I would have been less uneasy otherwise, but no, it had to pop up at that exact moment :mad: .

18

You can see independent testing results for Windows Defender here. For virus protection, it achieved 99.5% success and 100% success for the four week period prior to the report. Primary negatives were a slightly higher rate of slowing down installation of new software and a higher than average rate of falsely pinging benign software as potentially being malware.

19

My mistake. 98.9% total and 100% for the four week period prior to the report. I think I averaged the two or looked at the industry average for the 99.5% number.