quote:
Originally posted by Jarrod
but my first preference is not to run anti virus software
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090128091822AAlUBXI
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread353619/pg1
Lolled at the conspiracy theory of anti virus makers creating viruses.
Sure they benefit from bringing stories to the media, but somehow I just don't think a reputable anti virus maker would want to take the risk getting caught producing/spreading spam, password stealers, money laundering schemes, child pron, etc, etc. And if they were really into that, why would they make anti virus products in the first place, it's easier making money illegally (just as long as you don't get caught).
I do agree on the common sense thing, but that's for far from everybody, and doesn't give you any guarantee either. I studied years of computer science and supposed to know a bunch of how the internet works by now, but if I download something from what I consider to be a trusted source there is nothing stopping me from getting myself infected if they got their security compromised at some point. And there will be nothing hinting me I'm now part of some botnet spamming around, distributing child pron, or whatever, unless I start monitoring my network traffic. Having a virus scanner doesn't give me any guarantee either, but at least it's the best I can do.
But it all depends on how much you care too. I don't run anti virus on any of my laptops, just on my desktop. The laptops aren't used that much to begin with and there isn't any interesting data on it. Desktop on the other hand is on almost 24/7, I do a lot of different things on (including checking the trojans script kiddies submit as a Plus! script
), sensitive data, etc, etc.
But I would never say you can't get a virus if you know what you're doing, even if you don't visit any dodgy places and keep all your software up-to-date all the time. It will be far less likely, yes, but at some point you will download an executable from somewhere and unless you can read read code like in the matrix there is no way to tell if it does just what they promise it does... Let alone I can expect people like my parents to have any clue what's going on.
But at least we are all people who
considered having a virus scanner or not. Whether we decided to run one, or go just on common sense is probably not even that important... we're already much more secure than all those people who have neither
,
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