The research you cite–showing AVG as the worst performer–jibes with my long-term suspicions. After being burned a couple of times, I’ve been running McAfee and AVG (along with Zone Alarm) and thus ask: Why is it that when one of my anti-viral programs intercepts a virus, it’s always McAfee that catches it, while good ol’ free AVG sits there like a bump on a log? I’m talking every time. Fact is, I’ve never seen AVG spring into action and I keep it updated. (Why do I run it then? Scientific curiosity.)
Re: the notion of relying on what’s located between one’s ears as the best form of anti-virus, that suggestion doesn’t jibe with reality, especially for those of us who heavily rely on the Internet for business.
I’m no fan of attachments, given the attendant risks, but I have to open them from time to time. It’s a fact of business. Given the sophistication of the newer malware, the suggestion that you should “only rely on a trusted source” is meaningless. Whether you know who is sending you a virus has no bearing on whether they’re innocuously forwarding you a killer virus.
Interesting how few people recommend Norton. SystemWorks 2003 may be the worst resources hog in history. Read the reviews on Amazon.com.
I use Norton. It actually detects viruses (funny that).
I had McAfee for about 6 months. It slowed my computer to a halt, using up all resources (it was like having a virus anyway). Then it never detected a single virus, ever, and I get sent 2 or 3/day, sometimes more. Then I watched one horrible evening as my computer was obviously dying (from Klez as it turns out… I must have clicked something on accident) and McAfee told me that everything was virus free. Really it was! That was the end of that machine.
We also use it at work, it’s just as ineffective there as it was at home.
Get anything else. Hiring a psychic to use positive energy to keep your machine virus free would work as well as McAfee - plus it would be far more entertaining.
[QUOTE=amarinth]
Because it doesn’t work very well … It slowed my computer to a halt, using up all resources (it was like having a virus anyway). QUOTE]
PC Magazine vehemently disagrees, but then they’re the same folks who 4-star-rated Norton, a product that many, many users rage against as a huge resources hog that slows PC’s to a crawl. All of this points to the subjective experience of users re: malware protection. Go over to Amazon.com (or other sites) and you’ll find dozens of users ranting about Norton. PC Magazine, meanwhile, rates both Norton and McAfee as top notch. (Guess who’s buying lots of ad space?)
I had McAfee for 4 years. Over this period, the product went from poor to usually excellent. Of course, in this era of super-viruses, “usually” is a recipe for computing disaster. Suffice it to say: the state of the art lags behind the pimply-faced pukes who script this crap in their bedrooms.
I’ll also add this: In most real-world applications (i.e., for those of us who must open attachments for work purposes), running a PC without anti-virus apps is crazy–and please, folks–don’t counter with your anecdotal experiences. Ask any reputable computer pro, and they’ll tell you that a PC without virus protection (or router) is just begging for trouble.
I’ve used Norton’s, now I’m giving PC-cillin a try. I’m not an anti-virus/firewall fanatic – but I do believe in insurance and backup in case the day comes when “what’s between my ears” lets me down. Badly.
Also running AVG on a network, here. That is, I have two computers behind a router.
I just finished installing AVG at the suggestion today of a coworker (this thread had good timing), and am so happy, after having McAfee for over a year. McAfee hardly ever notified me of anything. Even worse, the few times it did, it said I had an infected boot record, but couldn’t fix it! I just used XP restore manager about an hour ago to rewrite the boot record, then installed AVG. It found 361 infected files! I’m never going back to McAfee.
I must be “begging for trouble,” then, because I haven’t used anti-virus on the computer I’m on right now for a looonnnng time. In fact, I can’t remember when I last updated the virus software, and I have no immediate plans to do so.
Would you purchase and install antivirus software written three years ago and expect it to offer you meaningful protection? I’m guessing no, right? – because antivirus software doesn’t do a very good job with viruses that came into being after the AV software was written.
Well, Macintosh antivirus software is, in its entirety, attempting to do that. The only protection it can offer the end user is to try to anticipate future viruses that it knows nothing about, and catch them if and when they make their appearance.
Because there are no existing ones.
Well, OK, some disclaimers do apply.
a) If a Mac user has the Classic environment, or is still using MacOS 9 or earlier, and opens an attachment that contains the AutoStart worm or one of the ancient 68K viruses that will actually run in anything newer than System 6, a virus infecton could actually result. None of these are “email viruses” of the sort that auto-propogate themselves by hijacking your email program or using an SMTP engine of their own. Except for AutoStart, they aren’t very destructive (one of them will attempt to throw up a message that says “Don’t Panic” at some point; one will attempt to change the name of your startup volume to “Trent Saburo” at some point; etc). But they do exist. So when I say I don’t use anything, that applies to my MacOS X environment. My MacOS 9 environment is adequately protected with a combo of the decade-old Disinfectant extension for the ancient 68K buggies and the WormGuard extension that stops AutoStart.
b) If your email rules are set up so as to auto-forward email under some circumstances to some recipients without any interaction from you, you may be auto-forwarding email infected with PC viruses to PC users. The Mac antivirus software does try to catch and quarantine these and prevent you from passively spreading them in this fashion. I find it easier to have my rules refrain from auto-forwarding any emails, and if I needed to I would strip file attachments first, and if I couldn’t do that I would queue but not send them until I’d had a chance to see what the attachments were.
Let me guess. You’re a Mac or Linux user, correct? I rarely see such certitude in savvy Windows users. (And don’t be so certain if you’re on a Mac platform.) Run an updated antivirus app on your PC and you’d be surprised what turns up–and as Czarcasm says, what you might be spreading to others.
I stand by my observations–as do the overwhelming majority of computer science professionals today. Outside of a Linux environment, heavy PC users (i.e. lots of attachments and downloads) need antivirus protection. Sure Norton is a heinous systems hog and, yes, Norton and McAfee are far from perfect, but operating Windows butt naked in a hostile environment is like having unprotected sex at an NBA orgy.
Geez, you guys have me paranoid now. I’ve got the online Pest Patrol (run once every few days) and AVG going realtime and a full scan every couple of days. Should I add more? Others?
I gotta stop it with the ghost stories and Anti-Virus tales. Next thing will be spyware…
Perhaps in a business environment, but a properly configured Windows PC, operated by a not completely naive user, is pretty safe from viruses. Don’t hide file extensions, disable some of the stupid Windows defaults such as running scripts by default, don’t boot from untrusted disks, and you’re pretty safe. I’ve been running a Windows PC for 12 years, no anti-virus software, firewall or anything, and I’ve never had a virus. I do keep a copy of AVG around, but I’ve never had occasion to use it.
When I worked as a PC support guy I did include Norton AV (ugh) in the standard build, because I couldn’t trust the users not to open those intriguing looking executable attachments (mind you, Message Labs’ e-mail scanning service helped a lot there), and because they liked having automated Word/Excel documents.