weateallthepies.com

I don’t use antivirus software…..

Doesn’t seem like much of an admission I know but its surprising the reaction that can be received from such a simple statement.

I recently posted such a statement in a forum and was faced with incredulity, called irresponsible and suggested that this sort of opinion was the reason that viruses last so long in the wild.

Now I concede that some people do need to use antivirus software but then some people need messages on their coffee cups telling them it contains hot liquid, or corks on their cutlery to stop them jabbing their own eyes out. Ok I’m being just a little bit cheeky but the fact remains that I have rarely used antivirus software and I know other similar people and what do you know, our computers have not been reduced to crash prone zombie machines infecting small children who wander past.

Lets ignore the fact that most people who complain of ‘a virus in my computer’ causing problems, probably don’t have a virus or at least not one that caused them to install some awful web search toolbar which springs pop-up ads on them every few minutes. There are only so many places that viruses can actually come from and its pretty easy to rule out most if not all of these using a little knowledge and a good deal of common sense.

I particularly like the comments by Luis Villazon of PCFormat magazine (source) quoted here:

Imagine if there was a billion dollar industry dedicated to selling you hyenas to control the badgers in your garden. Imagine that, even though there are no badgers in your garden and never have been, these companies told you that you needed to have a snarling, vicious hyena patrolling your lawn in case one should ever appear. And not just one hyena either, imagine they told you to add another hyena every month to provide adequate protection. And imagine that the hyenas were bad-tempered, smelly, dug holes in the lawn and chewed on your leg whenever you stepped outside. Finally, imagine that your garden was surrounded by a high wall anyway and the only way for badgers to get in was for someone to post them to you in a conspicuous badger-shaped parcel that you could simply refuse to accept when the postman delivered it.

That would be a pretty weird sort of business model, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t think that they would sell many hyenas.

To put my money where my mouth is I ran an online scan of my PC, which is switched on and connected pretty much 24/7. I install lots of software, browse lots of websites, use P2P, bittorrent, email, IRC etc.

The scan completed and what is this…..INFECTED in big red letters just to get my attention, obviously I need to buy the desktop version of this software to clean up my nasty infected PC before hackers steal my children. First I’ll look a little closer, ah its only found one virus…but whats this the (highlighted red might as well be blinking) virus is tagged ‘not-a-virus’…..damn strange name for a virus ready to eat my PC. Well bugger me its not actually a virus but a piece of non malicious but annoying adware, not only that…its not even an installed or a running process but a temporary file extracted from the installer for Nero Burning Rom which I had opted not to install. So my ‘infected’ PC was infected with a temporary file which I’d chosen not to run, would never be run and would be deleted the next time I cleared out the temp files.

I’m not trying to convince anyone, I don’t even really care if people want to use antivirus software and companies make stack loads of cash out of it. I just find it amazing that my opinion is considered almost heretical by otherwise rational people.