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You Don't Need an Antivirus (Except Microsoft's Built-in on Windows), Says Former Firefox Developer (ocallahan.org)
Former Firefox developer Robert O'Callahan believes that antivirus software is not necessary, AV vendors are of little help, and that you should uninstall your antivirus software immediately. From a blog post: Users have been fooled into associating AV vendors with security and you don't want AV vendors bad-mouthing your product. AV software is broadly installed and when it breaks your product, you need the cooperation of AV vendors to fix it. (You can't tell users to turn off AV software because if anything bad were to happen that the AV software might have prevented, you'll catch the blame.) When your product crashes on startup due to AV interference, users blame your product, not AV. Worse still, if they make your product incredibly slow and bloated, users just think that's how your product is.
...VIRUS CLEAN ANTIVIRUS
The writing has been on the wall for a while now. You rarely get "just AV" when you install an AV product these days. You end up with a whole suite of value added applications like password managers, system optimizers, registry cleaners, web site scanners, IPS and content filters, etc.
The reactionary system we have been living in was never very good. Relying on signatures to detect malware is a fundamentally flawed system. As the operating systems and, more importantly, the applications that run on them become increasingly secure, the need for the signature-based AV systems declines.
Any AV software company has seen this coming for a long time. At least I would hope they have.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Further, any software you install likely creates new security holes in your system. By installing an AV you are likely opening up more holes then you are closing.
There are three main sources of security holes:
1) Holes in the OS that the OS manufacturer needs to close
2) Holes in installed software that the software manufacturer needs to close
3) Holes in the user's general security intelligence.
None of those are solved by adding ANOTHER software suite.
Another benefit of using a virtual machine is just powering it off when you are finished and having it reset to the last snapshot. Every month or so apply patches and move your snapshot forward.
I started removing AV from clients computers years ago. All it does is slow your PC down. Every time I had to deal with an infection, the PC involved had AV, that was sometimes very hard to remove.
malware removal services should just be a tax on the easily confused.
I don't use AV, but the average person still needs it. The average person either doesn't know or doesn't care what they are clicking on. As part of a layered defense strategy for the average user, it is still needed. Personally, I don't like AV stealing my CPU cycles. I use other methods, common sense chief amongst them, to prevent infection.
These days one of the best AV products is a good ad blocker. I can protect myself from sketchy downloads: don't download sketchy software or from sketchy sites. I can't prevent some asshat from exploiting a zero day in a browser through an ad on a mainstream site, except by blocking all ads on all sites.
*Yes, trusted sites can be comprised and it's happened in the past where downloads were infected but the odds that I'll download that software during that window where the infected files are being handed out are about the same as me getting stuck by lightning.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Let's be real with ourselves. Nowadays the vectors for attack are easily protected so long as you use a modern browser that sandboxes itself and use an ad blocker you really don't need anything more than the built in AV and firewall tools for windows. I don't even think OSX provides an AV tool.
I haven't paid for antivirus software since 2005 which was coincidentally when I discovered Firefox and Adblocking extension.
I'll stick with the free tools.
AV products actually make you less secure. They act as a MITM, replacing certificates with their own and totally defeating the purpose of TLS/HTTPS.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This story needs some APK posts.
I find that SPI firewalls, execution prevention, careful permissions for limited users, NoScript and other tools are far superior to an AV.
Liberal OS policies and platforms are not ideal for anything you;d hate to lose. Often you would not know that something malicious is running.
With multiple layers of security on a system that does not change often you can have fine grain control of anything. An odd internet connection attempt, a never heard of before program attempting to run etc -that reasonable easy to catch.
AV vendors have been packaging (shoving) everything included as soon as they realised AVs are done. Unfortunately the desktop class products are often more trouble than they are worth.
That being said, I still advocate the complete security packages from AV vendors for users that know little being logging into facebook. They are clueless and could not manage a complex system a "security suite" type program is their best bet.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I do the same thing, except I have the song ~smooth operator by sade playing in the background when im in "secure" mode.
an appliance [...] prevents anyone from programming aka becoming more productive [and] stops users reaching enlightenment and getting the computer to do what it's for - lots of repetitive tasks in an automated manner.
Which elicits a big "So?" from appliance fans.
The majority of the population do not read Slashdot. I imagine that most either A. use computing devices for entertainment rather than "becoming more productive" or B. prefer to outsource the programming to a specialist rather than "reaching enlightenment" themselves. For evidence of these, look at the popularity of iPod touch, iPhone, iPad, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. For evidence of preference of delegation to a specialist, look at the popularity of services such as Jiffy Lube rather than doing your own car maintenance.
I think most of us have been bit too many times by the bloat that products like Norton AV and McAfee represent. Norton in particular is just a resource hungry monster, and as a good many of the machines in our organization are about seven or eight years old, the idea of putting that kind of CPU cycle ravisher on them fills me with horror. In the end, we upgraded to Windows 10 (a rather mixed experience), and just used the built-in Windows Defender plus a pretty locked down network and good backups so if, somehow, some ransomware gets loose, our actual data loss is fairly low. And that's really the lesson here, AV has never been the entire answer, and relying on it in the absence of good practices and user training has always been a dangerous path.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Hostfiles are a horseshit way to manage this. If you don't want to use addons then do it at the firewall where you can more easily manage lists you use and you don't have to do it on a machine by machine basis. This is more than possible with consumer gear and third party open firmware.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Not sure what you don't understand, but do these look like IP addresses to you? https://imgur.com/a/44AnF
You can block hosts at the firewall, you are not limited to just IP's. I think it's you that needs to take a refresher in compsci and networking. Your understanding seems to be a few decades out of date.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
And we should trust the developer of a browser whose development team didn't see the problem with their memory model chewing up resources until Firefox ground to halt and took an ivory tower position of something along the lines of "you shouldn't have your browser open that long." I know quite a few people who switched to Chrome over that nonsense, myself included. Why should we trust your recommendations again?
We'll make great pets