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Running a computer with no anti-virus
Marty81
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've been using AVG for all my anti-virus needs on my main computer, and while it seems to work well (how do you really know when your AV is working well, anyway?), it's a bit on the heavy side, RAM-wise, CPU-wise, and startup-time-wise. I recently got a netbook, and I'm considering running it with no AV whatsoever. I have zonealarm installed on it, and I'm going to put spybot (but not teatimer) on it. AVG has only ever detected something on one of my machines once and I have pretty safe browsing habits. On the other hand, it being a netbook, I'll be using it on all kinds of random unsecured wireless networks.
What do you think? Would you recommend this at all? If so, is there an online virus-scanning website that you recommend?
What do you think? Would you recommend this at all? If so, is there an online virus-scanning website that you recommend?
Marty81 on
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After some of the stuff I've seen floating around the web, I highly discourage going without anti-virus software. Keep in mind that the days of 'safe surfing' being enough are over. It's not enough these days to simply know that you shouldn't open an email attachment from an unsolicited stranger. Malvertisements are on the rise, javascript is highly exploitable, and every day there are new drive-by vulnerabilities. With xss attacks and other user-injected exploits possible, this means that just about any website that you trust could turn out to be a vector to infect you. When sites like national geographic are unwittingly distributing malware, it's hard to know what qualifies as a 'safe' site.
Of course, no A/V is ever going to be 100% effective. But the people who update that stuff are doing the work to make sure you're protected, so you don't have to exhaust yourself familiarizing yourself with every threat and exploit. It's a good layer of protection in that way, but certainly not fool proof. So I can understand the reluctance to have resources eaten up by it. I will say, though, that I've been running NOD32 for a while now. It's got a decently small footprint, and it's nice and speedy.
If you absolutely can't suffer a/v software, I'd recommend taking a few steps to protect yourself depending on your paranoia level. You can browse in a sandbox environment to prevent drive-by infections and browser hijacks. You can disable javascript in your browser, and then whitelist it by sites for Opera, or else just use script blocking for Firefox. There are certian programs you can run that will prevent any and all executables from running unless you whitelist them, but they're a pain in the ass more than anything. It all depends on how far you want to take it.
And by Niels Bohr's beard, if you choose to go without a/v software, don't you dare ever touch I.E. or you will regret it.
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I'm sorry, but how do you know this fact? Not all viruses make popups and banner ads. Some do their job quietly, logging keystrokes, looking for passwords, and silently sending this information off to whatever IP it reports back to.
Claiming you have had no or few virus infections based on your amount of pop-ups is naive.
This is quite true. Not all infections are scare-ware or nag-ware related.
Additionally, keep in mind that a reactionary response to infection is likely not a great one to have. Some of the infections out there are easier to prevent than they are to clean. If a Virut variant gets onto any machine, a/v software or no, you may as well reach for the OS installation disks and hunker down for a thorough reformatting. Also, the emergence of nasty rootkits means that, even if an infection can be cleaned, there's always a possibility that it never fully was removed.
But if you do travel the 'nets without an anti-virus software, backup everything you care about and be prepared to format at a moments notice.
A virus that tracks keystrokes or sniffs packets on your PC can retrieve that sort of information no matter how secure the website you're visiting is. It would grab the information out of cookies or files stored on your computer, or log your key presses in real time, not the information submitted to the website.
The short answer to your question is no, security of the bank website is not definitive account security. While it's not terribly likely that any random person with generally safe web browsing habits is going to download a virus that will steal all their passwords, it does happen. It's the reason they make anti-virus programs. There are free solutions out there, and people should make use of them if they don't already have an A/V solution.
It's not incredibly likely that it will happen to you, but really, why take the chance just because A/V is a bit of a resource hog? Sacrifice a few frames per second for the peace of mind.
It comes down to what the risk really is. What will be on this netbook? If you get a virus can you just reformat it on the spot?
If your computer does pick up a nasty little virus or bit of malware.
Could you fix it yourself without losing valuable data?
If the answer is yes then you will be just fine without anti-virus software. It's good to at least have something on stand-by. I ran my system without any protection for a good three years and never encountered any problems but of course I also wasn't using IE and Kazaa. You'll have to stay up to date and keep an eye on the pulse on the PC scene to stay completely safe.
I did eventually end up picking up a little malicious bug and it took me about a day to fix everything completely. Fortunately I run a dual boot of Ubuntu so I was able to work around some of the tricks the bug was causing my OS. I guess what i'm saying is that you need to be prepared if you decide to surf the nets naked.
If you do plan to do that(as I did with my netbook as well), just make sure you're familiar with the appropriate tools to remove anything that may come along - It's something I do on a daily basis, so that makes it a little bit easier for me. But honestly, with how well some of the anti-virus programs run these days and how cheap 2gb of memory is, do yourself a favor and at least use something like Comodo.
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If you do want to shell out the money for a good Anti-Virus, Norton Antivirus 2009 and the beta for 2010 are both very, very promising - near non-existant footprint on your system and they install in about 30 seconds.
I can't personally speak to the efficacy of AVG or Avast, I haven't used either in years. I like Symantec AV. I use the corporate version that doesn't have all the system tools and diagnostic shenanigans, and it doesn't heavily impact my desktop. My laptop drags ass a bit with it running, but it's older and really just for web browsing anyway, I'm not looking for peak performance out of it.
My personal experience with McAfee is that it's the most resource intensive solution I've been exposed to.
Again, this is only going to protect you from infections that make themselves obvious. Without some sort of A/V product, there are tons of viruses you can get that will not make their presence known in any way. You can catch a lot of things that you will never see any tangible detriment from, such as popups or degraded performance. Running ad-aware and ccleaner and spybot regularly is great, but those are not anti-virus products, and without an A/V package, you are leaving yourself at least partially unprotected.
Most any virus infection these days, even something like a system monitor has some suspicious activity related to it, be it a rogue process running in the background or an impact on system performance. You're right, not all of them are going to bog you down significantly or flash popups left and right, but I do this for a living. A HijackThis/ADS scan combined with free tools are enough to keep a system clean if you know what to look for, and it keeps me on my toes to do my job.
Which is why I'm saying I don't recommend it to everybody, by any stretch of the imagination. I consider this practice.
How much more dangerous are random unsecured networks than, say, the wired connection I have at home? Is there an increased risk of catching something, or is there just the increased risk of someone trying to listen in on what I'm doing?
Slight but not major. Don't have any open file shares, leave the windows firewall on, don't keep critical personal documents on it, have a complex password set for all accounts including 'guest' and the default administrator account, don't use unsecured public wifi for financial transactions.
And thanks for the recommendation, Erandus; I do actually have Symantec on the laptop but a yellow pop-up around the time of start-up never fails to inform me that "Symantec Antivirus is not enabled", no matter how much I fiddle with the settings. Bah.
I base this claim on the amount of times I have had to take action based on my computer's security being compromised.
Which has been once, and again, it was a particularly stupid piece of spy ware.
I bank online, never had my banking information stolen.
I sell things on ebay, never had my account information compromised.
I use paypal, never had my account "hacked".
I frequent many social networking sites, never had my accounts "hacked".
etc ad infinitum
I'm not saying I've never had a piece of piece of mal-ware sending out emails from my connection that I didn't notice, but in my computing experience, if you're anything like me with your browsing habits, I just don't see the point.
Sorta like the bad old days when you would scan for viruses using antivirus loaded onto a boot floppy.
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