Antivirus To Expensive

Seriously, does a 40 dollar a year antivirus really cost 40? They use to give it away for free once you paid the fee. Now it costs yearly..... seriously..... they must be making a killing in this racket.

 

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What's your hard drive worth to you? I've found AVG for free does a good enough job.

 

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anti-virus software is a ruse.
a good firewall in connection with vigilant surfing habits will go a long way to keep viruses from infecting your machine.
do not under any circumstances open any attachments to emails unless you are expecting one and trust the source.
ditch IE and get firefox.

another thing i've noticed is that i ALWAYS have more problems AFTER i update my OS.
i never update my OS. i have a grand total of 5 security updates saved to my HDD that i install when re-installing my OS.

the following might not apply to everyone:
disable DCOM.
disable UPNP.
disable meta file execution.
disable windows messenger.
disable the install bit for activex controls.

 

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Vigilant surfing and email habits are important

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The browser is merely preference...if you're vigilant, it doesn't matter which you use.

A good antivirus however doesn't hurt!

This is amazingly short-sighted. I have yet to experience a problem personally after O/S update. I did see a case once where a particular application did not like a Windows patch, but this is not the direct fault of the O/S update. Mind you this was not on any of my personal machines.

My point however is that these updates generally prevent security issues as well.

 

I've always had a good AV program installed, but it never finds anything. I think in the past 5 years I can remember 1 or 2 times that it detected an actual virus in a file I wanted to open. I've never installed Windows updates either, aside from SP2.

 

AVG is a goody prog, use it darky

 

Avira Premium is $26 a year, and is the best on the market.

 

if you can't live with it then move to linux. =)

but I don't really see the problem as most of those AVs seem to have a month-long trial version, and they always update new versions, etc. so you can be protected and that without paying.

I think it's actually good to switch AVs from time to time because one AV might find something that the other didn't, etc.

Besides that, if you're not completely internet illiterate then you know what not to click and what not to open, etc.

In most cases a decent firewall should suffice.

 

There's no good reason to pay for AV when there are many good programs out there that do the same job for free. AVG for example won't cost you a dime, and only run a couple of things in the background, so it doesn't hoard resources like Norton and McAfee.

Common sense is the best anti-virus protection...it's free and it uses no ram.

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So Darky, what are you going to do, pay the 40 bucks or download AVG for free? :shrug:

 

if you think linux can not be invaded by viruses then you are mistaken.
a virus is like any other computer program.
if a virus is written for linux then it WILL invade your machine unless you have taken preventive measures.

 

Of course, admittedly, even Linux is not 100% save, but we also have to realise that it needs a lot more steps to actually get your Linux system infected by a virus.

For example: think about the email-born viruses that Microsoft has, they are all executable and consequently tend to get executed by the user just by clicking on it, whereas with Linux you would have to save the file, then make it executable and then manually run the file.
So to say, you'd have to do those steps: read, save, become root, give executable permissions, run. Sounds like too much of a hassle, or not?

The more steps, the less likely a virus infection becomes, the less a catastrophically spreading virus becomes.

Also, the huge difference between Windows and Linux, while , for example, XP makes the first named user automatically an administrator(no power restrictions) Linux uses the first named user as the root administrator but does not allow root login on boot-up.
Basically, a Linux user would have to be stupid enough to run as root the entire time, and "accidentally" make the wrong files executable and run them.

To do any serious damage to the system one would have to be running as the root.

You can also disable execution in the home folder/partition is excellent. No executable programs - what chance would be left to get infected?

And to top it all, Linux OSes are way too diverse to be a big target. Too many kernel and GCC versions, and too many of the installed systems have varying base components or DEs.

Yes, Linux is not perfect, but certainly establishes a more secure footing than Microsoft Windows.

PS: once your computer is infected and you supposedly removed it with a AV program you still can't be sure of your computer being fully secure again.
Reformat and reinstall - definitely removes the virus.