Anit-Virus is a lie

F1tzwell

F1tzwell

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Curious as to what other people think about this, was an old topic in chat at SL.

The theory is that Anti-virus manufacturers are the ones making and installing viruses on your PC. I decided to give the theory a shot so I uninstalled the anti-virus software I had on my gaming PC and did all important stuff on my laptop that had anti-virus software.

After 3 months I installed ant-virus back on to my gaming PC and did a scan and found nothing, I uninstalled and waited another 6 months tried it again and still nothing. Its been about 3 years now and still to this day I have had zero problems with anything. I installed a anti-virus program a few months back, ran a scan and still no viruses. It seems to me that if you aren't dumb enough to install it yourself when prompted then you wont have a problem.

Just want to see what other people think.
 
This conspiracy theory is, unfortunately, quite a stupid one, because antivirus has been free for years now - and not just crappy opensource attempts, but professional companies. In fact, selling antivirus is so futile that even epic 90s companies like F-Prot failed to transition into the "new paradigm" of selling "security/privacy monitoring". And that means browser/email monitoring/VPNs/proxies/cookies/you name it. So they kinda died.

Nobody can sell antivirus. I'm not sure how nod and whatever the fuck is left selling paid antivirus ONLY is surviving, except people who are extremely and utterly put off by even the slightest appearance of upsell or some menu (that you never look at anyway) that offers you additional products (which does happen in avira or avast) or just aren't tech-minded and they think they're getting "better protection" by paying for it.

Sure, some paid antivirus may detect 97.9995% while the free ones might get 95.6635% in some arbitrary huge-ass-file collection of obscure shit which is what "virus benchmarks" do. But that's not worth paying a ridiculous $30+ per year for, IMO.

That being said, common sense "don't run retarded shit" will protect you from 100% of attacks which rely on running their shit, which are usually very obvious. In fact, they're so obvious that I've wondered why the people who write them aren't better about it, which can easily be achieved with just a little bit more effort.

Then again, there were the actual virii from the 90's and early 2000's which were actually dangerous and ran/replicated themselves in files pretty successfully. I still remember burnt CDs infected with win.cih all over :p . But maybe due to the UAC and other security improvements, no virus has made a single headline in over a decade now I think (the last one was iloveyou from the early 2000s I believe on winXP before SP1 or maybe even win98/ME? too lazy to search).

That being said, there's no way that I'll be entering banking or personal information on a public computer or a computer which doesn't have at least basic "information theft protection" which is basically antivirus with keylogger and some heuristics detection.

Edit: I guess the argument goes both ways. I was going to say that it doesn't make much sense to write virii when the protection against them is free. But then, people don't know free is "good enough" most of the time due to marketing, so maybe they do have a vested interest in keeping virii "alive." Unfortunately though, most of the exploitability and excitement that was around in the 80's/90's has disappeared, probably because everything is so much more secure and it's so much harder for a virus to propagate like they used to.
 
Avira. I've always liked it the most of the free bunch. Used F-prot until the mid-2000's actually, but the company kinda died. They stopped updating their shit completely, so I had to find something else.

I actually stopped using avira for a while when they introduced an upsell popup that would sometimes popup while playing a game, so I had to find something else because fuck that shit. So I used avast for a while, which is actually ok and had some interesting additional features like monitoring for things changing registry or system files but the interface was bleh. Not that it matters too much because you hardly ever see it but still...

So avira actually recently (3 months ago) decided that their popup wasn't making enough money to justify its annoying existence (that day I learned that actually happens in the world. it's a European company though, so there's that lul) so they completely removed it. It was a separate annoying .exe and process and shit, and now it's all gone and it's back to being pretty damn squeaky clean. I only want pure antivirus from an antivirus program, so I'm back to it for the foreseeable future.

http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

Oh, the only annoying shit is I think they include some ghey toolbar in the installer that's suppose to hide "unsafe search results" which you can just make sure to not install if you don't want it (or uninstall after install).
 
Ive used kaspersky the past 2 years and did the rebates so they were free in the end. Then I got fucked on a rebate from them and said bye and havnt bothered with a AV since. Like said above if you dont go looking for trouble trouble wont be looking for you.
 
Never had a problem with Avira for years and years. Their support is excellent too.
 
It all depends on the kind of stuff you get involved with. If for instance, you're downloading a lot of warez or going to unscrupulous websites...you're risk of infection is much higher. It's not some big conspiracy from the anti-virus companies.
 
If you don't use an Anti Virus software..than you don't visit porn sites....
 
I pick up Malware bytes pro when it goes on sale for $9. I have it on my computers and get it for friends and family. $9 for lifetime updates isn't too shabby.

Sent via Tapatalk carrier pigeon
 
BOT#00001 said:
It all depends on the kind of stuff you get involved with. If for instance, you're downloading a lot of warez or going to unscrupulous websites...you're risk of infection is much higher. It's not some big conspiracy from the anti-virus companies.
Click to expand...

PapiDrag0n said:
If you don't use an Anti Virus software..than you don't visit porn sites....
Click to expand...

If your browser is up to date, you should have little to nothing to worry about.

Even with warez, if you're smart about your sources, you shouldn't have to worry about things either. They trigger false alarms with their sometimes packed executables or loaders anyway.
 
The only time I had a problem was when I clicked the wrong link on a website for DayZ. I might get Avira again but its been so long since I used a Anti virus I just don't worry about anymore. I do all my important stuff on my net book anyways and that has two anti virus programs on it. What is weird is every once in a while one of those programs will find something but my gaming rig hasn't had a problem in almost 5 years I check about once a year or if it starts to run a little weird and not once has it ever found anything.
 
Rofl, two anti virus programs... btw they can conflict with each other pretty badly, so I wouldn't really recommend that.
 
Just stream your porn and your OK. One is avira and the other one is an anti root-kit I think, they don't do the same thing.
 
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