What Antivirus And Malware Do You Use?

What Antivirus & Malware Do You Use?


  • Total voters
    60
You can't have no antivirus or malware, You computer could be ridden with viruses then.

Could is the key word there. I know many people who don't run an anti-virus and they don't have any issues (at least noticeable ones).
 
Viruses are less prevalent in Macs. Not immune by any stretch of the imagination.

Agreed. Mac malware is becoming increasingly common. Even windows malware which will use a Mac as a benign host to get inside someone's home network! The perception that Mac's are immune to attack has been around for over 5 years now - and that perception itself has made users complacent and more vulnerable.

There are plenty of cyber threats out there now which don't rely on any particular operating system, they exploit Java, Flash, PDF documents, browsers etc. (yes I am aware certain flavours of OSX/iOS don't support flash). Even linux, which I use primarily, is vulnerable to certain types of attack. The single most important thing in this regard is to have safe browsing/email habits.

You can't have no antivirus or malware, You computer could be ridden with viruses then.

As for running without AV/Anti-malware tools, it can be completely safe to do this. I have never had an AV alert on one of my windows machine and it's fine. Furthermore, even operating system patches are not essential to avoid infection. The same windows machine I referred to above is running XP SP2 (since SP3 didn't like my hardware) and hasn't had updates in several years without issue. I don't have flash or java plugins in my browser and use no-script (firefox extension) extensively.

Patching was only essential historically before NAT routers (and hence hardware firewalls) became common-place or software firewalls (like the one in windows XP) were enabled by default (SP2).

I hope this demonstrates that things aren't as simple as 'X is secure, Y is bad' and internet users need to take responsibility for the security of their own devices. Security companies will continue to try and make systems as secure as possible, without negatively impacting usability in the process, and industry professionals will educate end-users about the dangers. However, there is a crude phrase which is rather accurate in this scenario: "Software can't cater for stupid". Ultimately the risk is centered around the user and - whilst it would sell well - anyone who claims to produce a device immune to attack is naive (and wrong).
 
Last edited:
Depending on your own knowledge of computer viruses and removing them yourself.... easiest things are to have something like Comodo and it's accompanying firewall and then malwarebytes with whatever anti virus you have.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Computer Forums mobile app
 
Back
Top Bottom