Do I Really Need an Antivirus Program?

[Ringmaster]

Because my computer has never gave me one problem . All my data is
there . All my programs work good . I have no problems at all . If I
had a virus wouldn't I notice something odd ?

Not necessarily. A virus may do nothing really harmful and just be
annoying like pop up some moronic message. Then again a certain
element of creeps are devoted to causing mischief. I got interrupted
before and had to step away from the computer then sent the message
before I was finished by mistake.

What I was going to say is there are several newsgroups devoted to
serious hackers who live to cause mischief. I haven't looked on them
for years so don't know how active the newsgroup is now.

alt.hackers.malicious.

Some VERY nasty but also very clever cut throat guys used to hang out
there. There are other groups as well. Visit if you still have
questions why having some anti-virus protection is a wise choice.

 

[Ringmaster]

Hi,

I too would suggest to have one though it cannot replace any of the already
suggested good safe computing practices.

I tend to see it also as one of the last line of defense for whatever reason
one got infected, it could help to quickly resolve and/or minimize the
damages, similar to the passive defense systems in a car (e.g. seat belt,
air bag).

Career criminals spend days and nights to come up with new viruses, and most
of us don't have the time, resources, skills, and knowledge to catch up with
them, so why not let security experts deal with them?

My two cents.

There used to be newsgroups with malicious or 2600 in their name that
were hangouts for some of the more nasty goofballs that spend their
time writing malicious code, some of it downright nasty. If they're
still active or not I don't know, but for sure some of their exploits
they openly discussed would make for interesting reading. ;-)

 

[xfile]

There used to be newsgroups with malicious or 2600 in their name that

were hangouts for some of the more nasty goofballs that spend their
time writing malicious code, some of it downright nasty. If they're
still active or not I don't know, but for sure some of their exploits
they openly discussed would make for interesting reading. ;-)

Hi,

Thanks for sharing and I'm sure that they are out there, waiting and
hunting.

In your other post, you are right about "A virus may do nothing really
harmful [...]", or rather, *noticeably* harmful things, as newer viruses are
designed to be stealth (and why do they need to notify people for what they
are doing?) and a common example is to *borrow* the person's address book
and attach itself to a message and send out to all recipients without the
person's knowledge, and in this case, it's the chain effect that we might
want to consider.

I think this will be an endless debate, but I admit that I've been brain
washed to think about the worst case scenarios and even second-to-second's
backup cannot help for critical information leaked from the computer.

 

[Kayman]

Many thanks for this very helpful info!

No sweat!
Although not related to AV, you may find this article educational (please
read it in its entirety):
Managing the Windows Vista Firewall.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc510323.aspx

 

[husky86]

Thanks again for all input--VERY helpful!

 

[husky86]

... -- for instance Adobe

That is completely untrue.

Be careful what you proclaim as "completely untrue."

Whenever I have had AVG installed (my latest antivirus trial run), for
example, Adobe Acrobat would go through the regular process of converting a
webpage to a PDF document; however, it would never actually produce the
document itself -- it was never able to actually bring anything to fruition
(and there was no PDF file created in the location I chose as a part of that
process). It's like the computer was working very hard to bring about...
absolutely nothing.

I contacted Adobe and went through 30 minutes of technical support
step-by-step. Nothing resolved the program... with the exception of the
removal of AVG.

Once AVG was removed, everything functioned perfectly with Acrobat.

I am certainly not saying that my experience is common. But it is very much
true.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Be careful what you proclaim as "completely untrue."

Whenever I have had AVG installed (my latest antivirus trial run), for
example, Adobe Acrobat would go through the regular process of converting a
webpage to a PDF document; however, it would never actually produce the
document itself -- it was never able to actually bring anything to fruition
(and there was no PDF file created in the location I chose as a part of that
process). It's like the computer was working very hard to bring about...
absolutely nothing.

I contacted Adobe and went through 30 minutes of technical support
step-by-step. Nothing resolved the program... with the exception of the
removal of AVG.

Once AVG was removed, everything functioned perfectly with Acrobat.

I am certainly not saying that my experience is common. But it is very much
true.

True? Maybe. You've completely changed your story, now. Your
original post stated that whenever any antivirus application was
installed, Acrobat failed. Now you admit that it was just one brief
incompatibility with only one anti-virus product. That's quite a
significant omission.

Which story are we to believe?


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[husky86]

Bruce,

I'm very grateful for all the extensive information you have provided. You
have given me a lot to think about.

But I wonder what is the cause of your excessively acerbic attitude...?

AVG was only the latest antivirus experiment. I've had problems with
previous antivirus programs causing problems with Adobe Acrobat; AVG was not
exclusive in this regard. I simply didn't feel like getting into all of the
individual problems with previous antivirus programs. I supposed -- perhaps
wrongly, in your case -- that this would become rather tedious.

Next time I will attempt to be more encyclopedic. My humblest apologies.

By the way, the antivirus program preceding AVG (and causing similar
problems) was Avast. It caused the exact same problems as AVG: Acrobat would
go into this long, drawn out process of creating a PDF file from a webpage.
But ultimately nothing was produced.

 

[xfile]

Hi,

For covert the current web page to PDF file problem, I'm not sure if you
have tried to use File/Print and then select installed Adobe PDF printer
method.

My own experience is that the IE add-on doesn't always work well for some
reason, and I'm not sure whose fault it is, but using File/Print function
almost always work.

Hope this helps.