Soldato
Nod32 is excellent been using it for years on my W7 PC , Im sticking with MSE on my W8 laptop though.
FAO: Microsoft Security Essentials lovers...
- Thread starter Nelly
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Nod32 is excellent been using it for years on my W7 PC , Im sticking with MSE on my W8 laptop though.
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Nothing wrong with MSE. The people who use it that I know havn't had problems or repeatedly brought it back to me with problems.
So, much, wrong, in one post....
NOD32 is the most overkill software suite I have ever seen in my life. It has 120919038892477839124912 options. I love power and flexibility but there is a limit.
I use MSE on my laptop, nothing on desktop and would never pay for a reactive AV solution (They all are).
Chances are people who pay for AV also leave JAVA enabled at browser level.
I use MSE on my laptop, nothing on desktop and would never pay for a reactive AV solution (They all are).
Chances are people who pay for AV also leave JAVA enabled at browser level.
Soldato
A far more insightful article for OcUK'ers here that are *still* putting up with anti-virus whatsoever software on their PC:
http://infosecisland.com/blogview/15106-The-Demise-of-the-Antivirus-Industry.html
The clock is ticking on this snake oil industry.
http://infosecisland.com/blogview/15106-The-Demise-of-the-Antivirus-Industry.html
The clock is ticking on this snake oil industry.
Soldato
In all the years I've been using PCs, which is too many, the only time I've ever had a virus or malware show up were false positives. I'm not going to start quaking in my boots just yet. 
Edit: obviously that in itself doesn't mean much, I could be secretly infested. But like all crime you can swing the odds heavily in your favour by being careful and sensible.
Edit: obviously that in itself doesn't mean much, I could be secretly infested. But like all crime you can swing the odds heavily in your favour by being careful and sensible.
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Don
In all the years I've been using PCs, which is too many, the only time I've ever had a virus or malware show up were false positives. I'm not going to start quaking in my boots just yet.
This.
Most of it is common sense and keeping things updated.
It's funny actually. Nathan got me to thinking about it, and like a good technologist I've made sure I've always had a decent A/V and antimalware product installed keep me safe a night.In all the years I've been using PCs, which is too many, the only time I've ever had a virus or malware show up were false positives. I'm not going to start quaking in my boots just yet.
Edit: obviously that in itself doesn't mean much, I could be secretly infested. But like all crime you can swing the odds heavily in your favour by being careful and sensible.
Do you know what, in the 20 odd years I've used a PC since the halcyon days of DOS 3.30 (and many other OS/computers before) I can't remember ever having an A/V pop up with a genuine Virus.
I'm trying out bitdefender at the moment which gets good reviews and interestingly on it's first scan it popped up 17 viruses it had saved me from. All of which turned out to be nothing more than tracking cookies. I can't help but feel that was specifically designed to be dramatic and make the average user feel like they were under attack and this amazing antivirus utility had saved them (so the better keep the subscription going).
Double click cookies a virus??? Really?!?! Don't get me wrong, I'm increasingly concerned about Google's view of privacy and tracking cookies aren't high on my list of things I think deliver me value, but really, flagging it as a virus and helpfully quarantining it for me after flagging it with "end of the world" type red alerts???
I suppose the danger is that if nobody used AV we'd be setting ourselves up for a problem, but right now if you know what you're doing, don't pirate stuff and keep yourself up to date with patches I wonder if "snake oil" might indeed be the correct view.
Win 8 has all the security I need already built in. Unless you're using programs with very few downloads and reviews, or anything else that carries a higher risk such as illegally downloading media (and even this is safe as long as you follow the proper channels) then you've got nothing to worry about.
Soldato
A few years ago I would get flamed out of here for making what I consider to be genuinely insightful but nonetheless anti-AV comments. I'm pleasantly surprised that attitudes are changing!
AV is without a doubt one of the most simultaneously useless and costly pieces of software you can install onto your PC. This is a fact.
Little known fact but I actually brought to market one of the first combined "anti-malware" and firewall products to market in the late 1990's. But the difference is that back then computers were wide open and exposed on the public internet. Nobody had personal firewalls. They had a dialup modem that hooked their Windows 9x machine straight into the public internet. Trojans and backdoors were rife, as was social engineering to infect people. My little product was one of the first to market to help combat these threats. I exited the market around 2001-2002 which was when broadband connections (and something called a NAT router) were clearly going to almost single-handedly destroy the purpose of the market. By this point numerous big names had sprung up like ZoneAlarm who had wrapped up the market with massive marketing campaigns to spread the FUD onto a new generation of 'net users who actually probably didn't the product at all.
In my opinion this product genre is wholly obsolete now. They no longer serve a purpose. It's that simple. The vendors are desperately trying to convince you they are still relevant but in truth they are not. They create their own headlines in the mass media to perpetuate the myth that we are all risk. We are not. Just having a NAT router for example cuts your risks by 99.9% compared to the "old days". The remainder can be dealt with quite easily by regular patching, avoiding use of products like Java JRE, Flash and Acrobat, and not doing anything utterly stupid to your PC like disabling UAC.
If you do managed to get infected with something these days, if it was never granted elevated admin rights then removal is usually as simple as a few quick file deletion from various folders in your Users folder. If it did get admin rights, then it may still be removable but to be honest most things these days are rootkits and whilst it may still be removable (I've removed dozens from friends and family's XP machines) you can never really trust that install again and a complete format becomes a recommended course of action.
If you ask your AV product to remove a rootkit just watch your PC die before your very eyes as it will almost certainly enter an unbootable state as a result of the AV's completely naive and botched attempt to remove something it does not understand.
AV products were originally designed to counter "file replicator" viruses. Viruses that served no real purpose other than to self-replicate by appending their code to all the other binary executable files on your PC. This type of virus were merely "annoying" back in the day. Nowadays they don't really even exist. The problem is that AV products are simply not operating at the right layer in the computer systems of today in order to exact a coherent and predictable amount of protection. It is the operating system's job to do this, not some third party "tack on" product. That's why Microsoft has ever since NT 6.0 taken hold of the initiative to pretty much pull the rug under the whole AV industry. Remember the outcry from Symantec, McAfee et al when Microsoft added UAC to NT 6.0? They were at one point about to take Microsoft to court in a class action lawsuit! This should speak volumes as to their motives...
AV is without a doubt one of the most simultaneously useless and costly pieces of software you can install onto your PC. This is a fact.
Little known fact but I actually brought to market one of the first combined "anti-malware" and firewall products to market in the late 1990's. But the difference is that back then computers were wide open and exposed on the public internet. Nobody had personal firewalls. They had a dialup modem that hooked their Windows 9x machine straight into the public internet. Trojans and backdoors were rife, as was social engineering to infect people. My little product was one of the first to market to help combat these threats. I exited the market around 2001-2002 which was when broadband connections (and something called a NAT router) were clearly going to almost single-handedly destroy the purpose of the market. By this point numerous big names had sprung up like ZoneAlarm who had wrapped up the market with massive marketing campaigns to spread the FUD onto a new generation of 'net users who actually probably didn't the product at all.
In my opinion this product genre is wholly obsolete now. They no longer serve a purpose. It's that simple. The vendors are desperately trying to convince you they are still relevant but in truth they are not. They create their own headlines in the mass media to perpetuate the myth that we are all risk. We are not. Just having a NAT router for example cuts your risks by 99.9% compared to the "old days". The remainder can be dealt with quite easily by regular patching, avoiding use of products like Java JRE, Flash and Acrobat, and not doing anything utterly stupid to your PC like disabling UAC.
If you do managed to get infected with something these days, if it was never granted elevated admin rights then removal is usually as simple as a few quick file deletion from various folders in your Users folder. If it did get admin rights, then it may still be removable but to be honest most things these days are rootkits and whilst it may still be removable (I've removed dozens from friends and family's XP machines) you can never really trust that install again and a complete format becomes a recommended course of action.
If you ask your AV product to remove a rootkit just watch your PC die before your very eyes as it will almost certainly enter an unbootable state as a result of the AV's completely naive and botched attempt to remove something it does not understand.
AV products were originally designed to counter "file replicator" viruses. Viruses that served no real purpose other than to self-replicate by appending their code to all the other binary executable files on your PC. This type of virus were merely "annoying" back in the day. Nowadays they don't really even exist. The problem is that AV products are simply not operating at the right layer in the computer systems of today in order to exact a coherent and predictable amount of protection. It is the operating system's job to do this, not some third party "tack on" product. That's why Microsoft has ever since NT 6.0 taken hold of the initiative to pretty much pull the rug under the whole AV industry. Remember the outcry from Symantec, McAfee et al when Microsoft added UAC to NT 6.0? They were at one point about to take Microsoft to court in a class action lawsuit! This should speak volumes as to their motives...
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Soldato
The key point I realised years ago is: Get infected by a virus, its backup and reformat time, whether you use paid or free antivirus software.
Soldato
Good post.
And a first class example of why AV are a joke. I honestly am baffled when I see people on here recommend this, that or whatever as an AV product. Seriously, they are all as woefully **** as each other. This is Overclockers UK. Talking about AV in "positive" terms should be a ban-able offence on here. We are meant to be leading the way in technology and usage of it. We should not allow ourselves to continue perpertuating one of the greatest technology myths and swindles of the 21st century.
The humourous "cookies" flaw has existed in AV products for at least 14 years. That it has still not been fixed surely clearly demonstrates the true motives of the AV vendors. These products are all about creating fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) in their users so that they continue paying their subscriptions. And for the "free" AV's out there, it's all about hoping you'll upgrade to their non-free product. No doubt with the constant reminders and nag screens thrown into the mix to help you make that decision.
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Soldato
The last virus to get me was "CIH" (it was a big'un back in the late 90's) and I got it from a PC Pro magazine CD-ROM disc (!). It infected all my files and even tried to destroy my BIOS. Nasty piece of work.
Fortunately it was a simple "file replicator" strain of virus for which AV tools were perfectly suited to dealing with back then, and I duly used one, from a MS-DOS boot disk.
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Soldato
The reason MSE is still the best AV is because it "ticks the box". That's all AV are for nowadays.
If you find yourself setting up a friend or family member's PC, sooner or later the subject of AV comes up. When this happens I sit them down and spend 5 minutes pretty much telling them they don't need it and that I will lock the machine down so they don't have admin rights at all anyway.
Unfortunately despite my best efforts this doesn't always work (the brainwashing through mass media and hysteria is too severe to fix in 5 minutes) or the line of "so if it goes wrong, you'll come and fix it yeah?" is uttered. And it is at this point that MSE goes on there, pronto. It ticks the box. But at the same time it is the least likely of any AV out there to cause issues, slowdowns or crashes etc. So from my point of view it is a win-win. It keeps the person happy, they feel that they are "protected" (albeit by nothing more than a tinfoil hat) and it keeps me happy because I won't be held responsible if they screw their PC up. Admittedly I'll still probably go fix it but I won't feel compelled to drop everything and rush to their aid.
If you find yourself setting up a friend or family member's PC, sooner or later the subject of AV comes up. When this happens I sit them down and spend 5 minutes pretty much telling them they don't need it and that I will lock the machine down so they don't have admin rights at all anyway.
Unfortunately despite my best efforts this doesn't always work (the brainwashing through mass media and hysteria is too severe to fix in 5 minutes) or the line of "so if it goes wrong, you'll come and fix it yeah?" is uttered. And it is at this point that MSE goes on there, pronto. It ticks the box. But at the same time it is the least likely of any AV out there to cause issues, slowdowns or crashes etc. So from my point of view it is a win-win. It keeps the person happy, they feel that they are "protected" (albeit by nothing more than a tinfoil hat) and it keeps me happy because I won't be held responsible if they screw their PC up. Admittedly I'll still probably go fix it but I won't feel compelled to drop everything and rush to their aid.
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Man of Honour
I have made no change whatsoever after reading the article in op.
I know MSE is good enough for my machines and has been for years and will remain good for more years to come.
There is no other AV that's installed with a few clicks, left to its own devices and with minimal to no nagging or annoyance required until a fault is found at which point it will quietly just notify you and take action should you not click the notification.
I know MSE is good enough for my machines and has been for years and will remain good for more years to come.
There is no other AV that's installed with a few clicks, left to its own devices and with minimal to no nagging or annoyance required until a fault is found at which point it will quietly just notify you and take action should you not click the notification.
Soldato
So without AV what tips you off that you have a problem? For the less in your face malware of course.