Does anyone NOT use an anti-virus program?

bringans · 24 Feb 2007 at 11:26

My main rig - Dont use any Anti V, I do load on Nod32 once a year or so and to this day never had a problem, I do use Zone Alarm Pro with anti spy.

My test machine: Nod32. ZA Pro, windows defender - to this day never had a problem or even reported anything

My Work laptop: same as test machine - but get the odd problem as I do connect this to many dif networks day in day out.

zappaDPJ · 24 Feb 2007 at 19:53

pieman109 said:
Going on the internet without at least some form of protection nowadays is madness (unless you really know what you're doing and sre prepared to take the risk)

Even though the people who responded that they don't use an AV product are probably a small minority here, I still find it hard to comprehend that any contributor to this board would choose not to.

How can you be sure that this site isn't serving you a virus? How can you be sure that the host this forum is sitting on isn't infected? This scenario happened to me recently and the first I knew about it was when my AV software picked up the virus when I logged into my own forums.

The bottom line is if you connect to the net or insert any form of media into your PC you are opening yourself up to receiving a virus. Keeping a drive image is no substitute because for all you know the image may be infected. If you don't run AV software then you won't know that until the payload reveals itself.

bringans · 24 Feb 2007 at 23:13

zappaDPJ said:
Even though the people who responded that they don't use an AV product are probably a small minority here, I still find it hard to comprehend that any contributor to this board would choose not to.

How can you be sure that this site isn't serving you a virus? How can you be sure that the host this forum is sitting on isn't infected? This scenario happened to me recently and the first I knew about it was when my AV software picked up the virus when I logged into my own forums.

The bottom line is if you connect to the net or insert any form of media into your PC you are opening yourself up to receiving a virus. Keeping a drive image is no substitute because for all you know the image may be infected. If you don't run AV software then you won't know that until the payload reveals itself.

A good hardware firewall will stop this, add ZA and plain old brains you dont get infected.

15+ years and I have never had a virus / trojen, but then I dont open mails attachments unless ive been told to expect it from the sender, I dont click links in mails, I use commen sence when surfing. updateing windows as well as keeping on top of most zero day problems, visting sites like http://www.securityfocus.com/

Richdog · 24 Feb 2007 at 23:22

bringans said:
A good hardware firewall will stop this, add ZA and plain old brains you dont get infected.

15+ years and I have never had a virus / trojen, but then I dont open mails attachments unless ive been told to expect it from the sender, I dont click links in mails, I use commen sence when surfing.

Do you think firewalls offer virus protection other than to limit your computers visibility/presence on the net? If a piece of malware gets through a firewall will do sweet FA to help get rid of it...

Elevon · 24 Feb 2007 at 23:26

rare said:
Running 64bit vista and support is lacking! So no, not atm. Although in the past I used AVG, which I always thought was a great piece of software.

Plenty of good free AV for Vista x64,try Avast free home edition,works great and is very good,free too so nothing to lose.

bringans · 24 Feb 2007 at 23:32

Richdog said:
Do you think firewalls offer virus protection other than to limit your computers visibility/presence on the net? If a piece of malware gets through a firewall will do sweet FA to help get rid of it...

Dont get me wrong sure this can happen, the thing is even the best malware still has to have you ether install / click yes ie you the user has to make a action, unless you have not updated windows. Sure you could say that maybe its not patched yet, but then the same can be said that even the best virus software is not upto date as well.

I am not saying everyone should do what I do, same as not everyone should drive a F1 car, I am more saying this is what I do and as of today ( touch wood) Its worked for me.

Infact I would never leave a clients machine with out AV / ZA pro and would never recommend to anyone to do anything less.

Barrington · 24 Feb 2007 at 23:52

Like some others here, i also run no AV, no software firewall and no adware/spyware checker (except running adaware and spybot s&d every so often) but use a hardware firewall.

Running both windows and linux machines on my network and haven't had a problem since as far as i can remember. Afterall, if you're just careful what you click and download - surely avoiding viruses and guff on the net can't be hard..

Azagoth · 24 Feb 2007 at 23:52

Personally I don't have an anti-virus scanner running all the time in the background. What I do have is Avast AV which I run once a week alongside Spybot and AdAware and to this date I've been 100% clean.

james.miller · 24 Feb 2007 at 23:56

people will say its down to you as the user as to whether you get a virus or not and blaming it on 'dodgy' activities when you do. That's utter nonsense, people have and do get virii from perfectly legit sites, even Microsoft site has been known to carry a virus before.

it costs bugger all to your wallet and bugger all to your cpu cycles to run a decent free virus suit such as avast or avg, so there's no excuse what so ever.

bledd · 25 Feb 2007 at 00:01

i dont use one, or spyware protection

hardware router is plenty for me

i have nod32 on my fileserver, incase my housemates put something crap on there, they're all mac noobs, but avi, mp3, mpg, mpeg + vob are all excluded, so it doesn't slow it down that much

Curio · 25 Feb 2007 at 04:02

I'm using Avast now. I used to have AVG but it totally failed to pick up a virus which nuked the wife's PC, then jumped across the network and had a munch on mine. I gave it one more chance, then a few months ago it let another one slip through and I ended up having to re-install :mad:

Moredhel · 25 Feb 2007 at 04:55

I tend to have one installed and do a monthly sweep just for peace of mind, I certainly never have any of that resident crap running. I've never actually picked up a virus, not in over 13 years online.

eXor · 25 Feb 2007 at 13:09

A more important question is, 'Does anyone NOT run as a restricted user?'

Running as an Administrator 24/7 means that any malware that gets past the firewall/AV has read/write access to the entire system.

KraniX · 25 Feb 2007 at 14:37

Can't believe the amount of people saying that don't run any protection. Considering this forum is generally populated by those who are supposed to be more PC literate than the average Joe Public I'm pretty shocked

As has been said, how some can say they don't use any protection and then claim never to have had a problem is just insane frankly. You could have some dodgy virus or malware sitting quietly in the background right now just waiting for a particular day before formatting your hard drive, or worse.

And we've not even mentioned email issues, I receive junk email in my blueyonder account pretty much daily and it was Kaspersky AV that found a trojan virus in a fake Halifax Bank message (those ones where they ask people to login and steal the idiots money) just a week or so ago.

A years protection from a decent AV program like Kaspersky costs just over £20, what's twenty quid a year compared to the amount people waste on beer and cigarettes every week? And you can get some superb free protection so there really is no excuse.

Feel like I'm wasting my time to be honest, as if you haven't clocked on by now you only will once you've had a really severe problem, fingers crossed it won't be when some dodgy group of foreigners have cleaned out your bank account.

Lot of heads in the sand if you ask me.

bledd · 25 Feb 2007 at 14:40

i used to have protection all over the shop

but now i go for speed, i dont use outlook (or have it installed for that matter), and never go on dodgy sites, the odd hijackthis scan does me fine

fdxd · 25 Feb 2007 at 14:46

KraniX said:
Can't believe the amount of people saying that don't run any protection. Considering this forum is generally populated by those who are supposed to be more PC literate than the average Joe Public I'm pretty shocked

As has been said, how some can say they don't use any protection and then claim never to have had a problem is just insane frankly. You could have some dodgy virus or malware sitting quietly in the background right now just waiting for a particular day before formatting your hard drive, or worse.

And we've not even mentioned email issues, I receive junk email in my blueyonder account pretty much daily and it was Kaspersky AV that found a trojan virus in a fake Halifax Bank message (those ones where they ask people to login and steal the idiots money) just a week or so ago.

A years protection from a decent AV program like Kaspersky costs just over £20, what's twenty quid a year compared to the amount people waste on beer and cigarettes every week? And you can get some superb free protection so there really is no excuse.

Feel like I'm wasting my time to be honest, as if you haven't clocked on by now you only will once you've had a really severe problem, fingers crossed it won't be when some dodgy group of foreigners have cleaned out your bank account.

Lot of heads in the sand if you ask me.

Antivirus is overrated. The reason security companies are moaning about Vista is because many of them are going to go out of business in the future. Bug ridden XP was their golden era

james.miller · 25 Feb 2007 at 15:47

Curio said:
I'm using Avast now. I used to have AVG but it totally failed to pick up a virus which nuked the wife's PC, then jumped across the network and had a munch on mine. I gave it one more chance, then a few months ago it let another one slip through and I ended up having to re-install

i had a rootkit that avast never picked up. avg killed it dead though. i dont think there is a perfect scanner unfortunately

SexyGreyFox · 25 Feb 2007 at 16:02

Dear Agony Aunt,

My friends tell me that if I sleep with a load of girls and don't use a condom that the chances of me getting a STD is slim if I know when to pull out.

Or are they talking crap?

Gaverick · 25 Feb 2007 at 16:29

Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte from security now don't use AV, they say they know what they are doing, I'll go along with that. I don't keep AV installed because I like to have as little running as possible, but every now and again I'll install AV and do a scan, never pick anything up.

Ratbag · 25 Feb 2007 at 16:53

Can't believe the amount of people saying that don't run any protection. Considering this forum is generally populated by those who are supposed to be more PC literate than the average Joe Public I'm pretty shocked.

On the contrary, I believe the power user knows how to avoid infections and generally wants as few processes running as possible.

I've had a PC for 9 years and never had an infection of any sort.

The main reason for not getting infected is that I AM NOT STUPID. I won't open unsolicited attachments and I shy away from using MS apps such as IE which are prone to attack.

The only software I have running that could remotely be considered "security" related is Winpatrol which alerts me if any new items are added to my startup list, and admuncher which blocks popups. I admit to having NOD installed but it is not memory resident - instead, I just manually scan any potentially dodgy downloads.