Who here does NOT use any type of anti-virus or spyware? (windows users only)

LOL at this thread...going for "longest thread" title?

Occasionally some of the anti-AV users won't be posting cuz they're formatting and reinstalling their rigs. ROFL
 
Because I can't think of a convincing reason TO use it.

Two reasons:

1) Identity theft.
2) The potential for your computer (and thus your IP address) to be used in illegal activities, thus prompting a knock on your door and a rather harrowing experience as the authorities determine that you aren't at fault.

The reduced risk FAR outweighs the minor effort required to download and install two or three pieces of well-tested software.

Would you trust birth control that "sorta, kinda worked" "some of the time"?

Condoms are something like 97% effective. That means 3 out of 100 condoms doesn't work. That's three times out of a hundred that you're taking the chance of getting the girl pregnant. It's not 100% guaranteed protection, so you might as well just not use them, right?

That's really poor logic, and I doubt you'd apply it to anything else. I'll take 3/100 over 100/100 every time.

Tangential FYI: The reason condoms are percieved as being so much *more* effective than 97% is because it's something like a 1/16 chance that on any random day you'll get a girl pregnant. Put condoms in the mix, and you have to have a condom fail on the right day, making it 3/1,600. You'd have to have sex over 500 times on random days to STATISTICALLY get a girl pregnant once...and that's if she's not on the pill. Pill + condoms + girl knowing when to be careful to avoid pregnancy = no baby.

(disclaimer: we're talking odds, not real life. Somewhere there's probably a poor schmuck who's wife or girlfriend got pregnant the day they gave up their virginity to each other in spite of a condom and her being on the pill.)
 
So then don't use a lackluster one. There are plenty of damn good ones, and some of which are even free. Thinking you're better off with nothing simply defies logic.

The average consumer does not know that (the kind that really badly need AV). So, you should focus your efforts on finding a way to convey that same point to them.

I'm fine without AV software, always have been, and in the foreseeable future, will be. Thanks for your input.
 
I'm not a retard, I don't get viruses. I've never gotten one in 8 years. I see no reason to have an icon sitting in my task bar taking memory and hdd space as well as CPU cycles, no matter now minuscule the loss is.

If you run an AV that's great, but don't go around acting like other people are stupider than highschool dropouts because they don't.
 
I have a suggestion. It's obvious the pro-AV camp isn't going to convince the rabid anti-AV camp of anything, so let's just drop it. I think the thread speaks volumes about pro-AV on it's own, without any further comment from any of us. If someone with a truly open mind reads only a fraction of it, they'll understand the points made and be able to make an informed decision on their own.

So, truce?

Let's just quit the name-calling and have a reasonable discussion.

People who don't use AV aren't necessarily stupid, and people who think they should aren't necessarily trying to force an opinion down their throats. *Some* of us are genuinely concerned for our fellow users and the internet community in general, both of whom are put at risk by viruses running rampant. I don't want a single forum poster to be hurt because they made an uninformed decision that put them at risk, and I don't want to see the internet take a hit because it's laden with virus traffic.
 
The average consumer does not know that (the kind that really badly need AV). So, you should focus your efforts on finding a way to convey that same point to them.

I'm fine without AV software, always have been, and in the foreseeable future, will be. Thanks for your input.
We aren't a forum of average users...we are a forum of adavanced computer enthusiasts who should know better that to be so careless.
 
Two reasons:

1) Identity theft.
2) The potential for your computer (and thus your IP address) to be used in illegal activities, thus prompting a knock on your door and a rather harrowing experience as the authorities determine that you aren't at fault.

The reduced risk FAR outweighs the minor effort required to download and install two or three pieces of well-tested software.

Two very good reasons, perhaps the most convincing in this entire thread.

Condoms are something like 97% effective. That means 3 out of 100 condoms doesn't work. That's three times out of a hundred that you're taking the chance of getting the girl pregnant. It's not 100% guaranteed protection, so you might as well just not use them, right?

That's really poor logic, and I doubt you'd apply it to anything else. I'll take 3/100 over 100/100 every time.

Well, you've misinterpreted my statement, or I did a bad job of conveying it.

I never meant Condoms aren't effective. I agree, condoms are very effective. I never disputed that, I merely used it as an example. The point I was making was this: If condoms had a success rate of 90%, would you still buy them and use them as your sole and exclusive form of protection? 80%? How about 70%?

If most or all AV software had detection rates in the 97% range, that would be fantastic. The problem is they don't. A study completed recently concluded that a lot of the popular chioces for AV nowadays had detection rates severely lower than 97%. In fact, only about a dozen of more than 60 solutions even had detection rates higher than 90%. More than half didn't even catch 80% of the threats.
http://www.virus.gr/english/fullxml/default.asp?id=82

Also, the assumption has been made that, without AV software, the risk of infection is 100%. In theory this might be true, on an indefinite timeline. Obviously this isn't true in practice.
 
I don't use antivirus software because it shouldn't be necessary.

Seat Belts shouldn't be necessary, but guess what? There are accidents and stupid drivers all over the road that make it necessary.

Because I SHOULDN'T have to use a seat belt- that means I won't wear one. The logic is so wrong its almost funny...
 
We aren't a forum of average users...we are a forum of adavanced computer enthusiasts who should know better that to be so careless.

So then you agree that most users here already know that "There are plenty of damn good ones, and some of which are even free." Just making sure.
 
Seat Belts shouldn't be necessary, but guess what? There are accidents and stupid drivers all over the road that make it necessary.

Because I SHOULDN'T have to use a seat belt- that means I won't wear one. The logic is so wrong its almost funny...

COMPLETELY different context. The comparison is shameful. Software vendors have a luxury that car vendors do not, complete operating limits.
 
We aren't a forum of average users...we are a forum of advanced computer enthusiasts who should know better that to be so careless.

Being able to type a URL into an address bar and landing here, hardly makes anyone an "advanced computer enthusiast"...:)
 
AV software shouldn't be necessary, but it is. Going through 30 security checks to fly anywhere in our country shouldn't be necessary either, but it is. Both are a matter of taking necessary precautions against the society we live in.

My community college that I take a night class in is shut down for 5 days now because of an e-mail threat. It's a damn shame these precautions need to be taken...but given the world events and our society, it NEEDs to be done.
 
AV software shouldn't be necessary, but it is. Going through 30 security checks to fly anywhere in our country shouldn't be necessary either, but it is. Both are a matter of taking necessary precautions against the society we live in.

My community college that I take a night class in is shut down for 5 days now because of an e-mail threat. It's a damn shame these precautions need to be taken...but given the world events and our society, it NEEDs to be done.

Being threatened into altering our lifestyle shouldn't be necessary, you're right. But are we going to keep saying that and let it become business as usual?
 
Being threatened into altering our lifestyle shouldn't be necessary, you're right. But are we going to keep saying that and let it become business as usual?

We aren't. We install AV and continue on as usual.

You have to be extra careful about what you do. If you get a virus- you gotta reinstall Windows. We carry on as usual.
 
We aren't. We install AV and continue on as usual.

You have to be extra careful about what you do. If you get a virus- you gotta reinstall Windows. We carry on as usual.

But, if you get a virus.. you gotta reinstall Windows too. AV software is not an excuse to be careless online. Everyone should be extra careful at all times online, that's one point that I'm trying to drive. Remember that whole "illusion of security" thing? Yea.
 
But, if you get a virus.. you gotta reinstall Windows too. AV software is not an excuse to be careless online. Everyone should be extra careful at all times online, that's one point that I'm trying to drive. Remember that whole "illusion of security" thing? Yea.

I never said it was. I can rest easier though, as I have protection from known viruses.
The 10-15 new ones a day, we are all game for. But the hundreds of thousands of other ones- you are completely exposed to, and I'm not.

Again, it goes back to if you would like to be protected from 99% of viruses, or 0%.
 
I never said it was. I can rest easier though, as I have protection from known viruses.
The 10-15 new ones a day, we are all game for. But the hundreds of thousands of other ones- you are completely exposed to, and I'm not.

Again, it goes back to if you would like to be protected from 99% of viruses, or 0%.


And every day I wake up *knowing* that I'm not protected against them. And my actions online resonate with that fact. Do you wake up every morning "knowing you're protected against 99% of whats out there"? Because you're not (unless you happen to run Kaspersky). Check out the link I posted above for one recent study.

I'm also puzzled by your claim that we're "completely exposed" to viruses. Keeping windows up to date and reducing your surface area protects you from most worm-like viruses out there. That just leaves downloads/executables. Sure, downloading files from unknown sources and running them locally as admin could expose me to viruses, but why would I do that? Remember, I know I'm not protected against potential threats.
 
I'm not a retard, I don't get viruses. I've never gotten one in 8 years. I see no reason to have an icon sitting in my task bar taking memory and hdd space as well as CPU cycles, no matter now minuscule the loss is.

If you run an AV that's great, but don't go around acting like other people are stupider than highschool dropouts because they don't.

Just understand that in doing so you leave yourself at greater risk of something bad happening that could affect your life for YEARS.

As I've said in this thread, I went without AV from the release of XP in 2001 to late 2006 without an infection. Prior to that, it was probably several years...I think I used my last virus infection as an excuse to upgrade to Windows 98 (pre-SE, that should sufficiently date it). Then one day I noticed some odd network behavior and found that I'd picked up a trojan that was used to put an IRC bot on my system. You don't have to be a retard to be infected; you just have to be at the wrong IP address at the wrong time without protection against whatever it is they're using.

You want to go without AV, fine. I can't force you, and in all reality it's of little consequence to me. But if you should ever find yourself a victim of a malicious hacker, remember...you could have done more to prevent it, at almost no expense to you.

It's an once of prevention versus a pound of cure. I've been a victim of identity theft (coworker stole my employee files) and I can tell you that it takes a fair bit of money and a few years to get everything sorted out of they do a thorough job of wrecking your credit. Even if the chance of ID theft by virus is 1/100,000...I'd rather reduce the odds by whatever practical means available to me.
 
If most or all AV software had detection rates in the 97% range, that would be fantastic. The problem is they don't. A study completed recently concluded that a lot of the popular chioces for AV nowadays had detection rates severely lower than 97%. In fact, only about a dozen of more than 60 solutions even had detection rates higher than 90%. More than half didn't even catch 80% of the threats.
http://www.virus.gr/english/fullxml/default.asp?id=82

Also, the assumption has been made that, without AV software, the risk of infection is 100%. In theory this might be true, on an indefinite timeline. Obviously this isn't true in practice.

If an AV package only detects 80/100 threats, that leaves 20 that are a risk to you.

If you don't use an AV package, that leaves 100. My point stands. I'll take 20 threats over 100 threats any day.
 
And every day I wake up *knowing* that I'm not protected against them. And my actions online resonate with that fact. Do you wake up every morning "knowing you're protected against 99% of whats out there"? Because you're not (unless you happen to run Kaspersky). Check out the link I posted above for one recent study.
Nothing will ever make up for a lack of user education.
I'm also puzzled by your claim that we're "completely exposed" to viruses. Keeping windows up to date and reducing your surface area protects you from most worm-like viruses out there. That just leaves downloads/executables. Sure, downloading files from unknown sources and running them locally as admin could expose me to viruses, but why would I do that? Remember, I know I'm not protected against potential threats.
What about the drivebys that use known and unpatched vulnerabilities in the web browser? Like the one from ASUS's website a while ago, or theregister. Worse, with google adsense being what it is, it's entirely possible that could be exploited at some future date as well.

The point being made is that no matter how careful you are, you still run the risk of getting infected. This risk can be minimized with an AV. Given that an infection can wreck my finances, I choose to minimize the risk. Further, as a mail admin, I feel everyone should run something. I can almost guarantee you the box that just tried to flood my mail server with 2049 messages didn't have an AV installed.
 
I can almost guarantee you the box that just tried to flood my mail server with 2049 messages didn't have an AV installed.

*routinely updated, current AV.

I had a domain controller pick up a virus a few years ago. It was under the umbrella of corporate IT, and I wasn't supposed to touch it. Well, they forgot it was there (literally) and because those geniuses were using manual updats pushes with Norton AV, it went two years without getting updated.

I took the fall for that even though I had documentation that they'd told me to keep my hands off it :mad:
 
I can almost guarantee you the box that just tried to flood my mail server with 2049 messages didn't have an AV installed.

If I recall, that drive-by affected Internet Explorer only. Even if you have AV, no amount of prevention will save you from IE.

EDIT: A quick review of this particular vulnerability reveals that more than half of the fully updated AV solutions did NOTHING to detect this virus after it was unleashed: http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/82643+asus+drive-by

Very possible. I think the argument being presented here is that system that send spam aren't protected. I agree with you, it's very likely. I'm just not seeing how it relates to *me* not using AV, which everyone seems to be so concerned about.
 
I'm just not seeing how it relates to *me* not using AV, which everyone seems to be so concerned about.

The point being made is that no matter how careful you are, you still run the risk of getting infected. This risk can be minimized with an AV. Given that an infection can wreck my finances, I choose to minimize the risk. Further, as a mail admin, I feel everyone should run something.

You must have missed the rest of my quote, so I requoted here for you.
 
I came up with a more accurate analogy for AV software. Cars. More specifically, seat belts and air bags.

I think we can all agree that only an idiot would drive without a seat belt. By the arguments here, some of you might claim that you could rebuild your car within an hour ( day, week, whatever ) should a serious accident happen, completely neglecting the damage done in the actual accident.

You might also say that you drive carefully, but you don't have to be the one causing the problems to get into an accident ( a stretch, I'll grant. But look at it like this: You have safe browsing habits, but if you go to a website that has comprimised ads, you can still get infected. ).

The plumbing analogy doesn't work simply because it doesn't have the level of complexity that a computer does.
This is from several pages back, but wth...

Its more akin to driving with a marginal or nonexistant braking system and driving carefully. If everything else works right 100% of the time, I can drive a car carefully without brakes. Its when the kid runs out in front of me or some idiot pulls out that there is a problem.

Same thing with antivirus, it is irresponsible to run a PC on the internet without some protection or at least frequent free online scans. How many of you are comprimised and send out that damn "male enhancement free rx online" emails without knowing?

Its not like you'd ever notice a 1KB email sent out, but if it goes to 500k+ people in one shot, you have a serious problem.

I've been working on computers for 15 years now. Since Windows 2000, possibly before , you can get a virus *just* by plugging the damn ethernet cable up and pulling an IP. I've actually been installing Win2k, had networking start up and the Norton CD sitting on top of the computer, waiting to install drivers first. Within tops of 3 minutes, the system was comprimised. Never even opened IE, got on the network, nothing, just pulled a public IP address. I grabbed the nearest ethernet when I set up the machine on the workbench, didn't realize it was the one going to the cable modem and not the NAT'ed internal lan.

There's two hours of my life I'll never get back...
 
Throughout this whole thread, it's seemed that there have only been a few brief mentions of the use of IE alternatives. I think regardless of whether you're pro or anti AV, using Firefox, Opera or some other non-IE browser can go a long way to help prevent any infection in the first place - especially in the oft-mentioned case of danger from browsing seemingly safe sites that have been hijacked. Goes under the "ounce of protection is worth a pound of cure" moniker.
 
I've never had a lot of virus problems, but hell, AVG picks up a trojan or something minor about once a year.

But are the people not using AV the younger folks or something?
Because I remember the blaster worm that would hit computers just because they were on the internet. You didn't need to do anything - just be connected to the internet. Within seconds, even a computer on dial-up would get zapped. And long before that, viruses regularly spread via floppy disc...they managed to spread that way in the earlier DOS/Win3.1 era.
 
I've never had a lot of virus problems, but hell, AVG picks up a trojan or something minor about once a year.

But are the people not using AV the younger folks or something?
Because I remember the blaster worm that would hit computers just because they were on the internet. You didn't need to do anything - just be connected to the internet. Within seconds, even a computer on dial-up would get zapped. And long before that, viruses regularly spread via floppy disc...they managed to spread that way in the earlier DOS/Win3.1 era.

With a firewall (software or hardware) or NAT, you were not affected by Blaster. Firewalls, I feel are very important for many reasons listed in this thread (especially the spam zombies). But, most people nowadays isn't using a router with NAT or a firewall box. The ones who aren't hopefully have left Windows Firewall enabled.
 
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