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Thread: AntiVirus

  1. #1
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    Default AntiVirus

    Hey fellas.

    Was wondering what everyone uses for an AV. On a few of my rigs i said f-it and go bareback into the web... in the past Nod32 was a pretty good one... before norton... A few i keep secured with nod32

    Anyone got any suggestions for a decent AV? Im skeptically of keeping the same one more than a year or two. Feel like once they become big... the antivirus becomes the virus (ayy whatsup maccafee)

    Thoughts?

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    Never seen a use for one. Most of them are overbearing, get in the way of daily usage, like you said they become like a virus after a while. On Windows 7 I always used to disable everything and had a great experience. On Windows 10 I find Defender to be better than nothing, though its realtime protection is annoying and you can only disable it for so long before it turns itself back on.

    On GNU/Linux you don't typically need anything extra running to defend against malware, and there's always stuff like ClamAV/rkhunter if you're super paranoid. I'm not sure how much good you're doing with those if you're not already using something like SELinux though.

    My old job deployed Sophos on their machines which worked pretty well from an admin perspective. Users never complained about it so it's probably okay.

    All of the flashy consumer ones are garbage, AVG, Avast, McAfee, Comodo, Symantec (Norton)

    Malwarebytes and ESET NOD32 used to be good back in the bad old days (circa 2012) but I don't know how much they've soured.

    In any event, use common sense and don't run random stuff you download or copy commands from the web and you've already defeated the vast, vast majority of malicious software you'd encounter
    Last edited by KeepBotting; 02-06-2019 at 08:43 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by KeepBotting View Post
    Never seen a use for one. Most of them are overbearing, get in the way of daily usage, like you said they become like a virus after a while.

    My old job deployed Sophos on their machines which worked pretty well from an admin perspective. Users never complained about it so it's probably okay.

    All of the flashy consumer ones are garbage, AVG, avast! McAfee, Comodo, Symantec/Norton

    Malwarebytes and ESET NOD32 used to be good back in the bad old days (circa 2012) but I don't know how much they've soured.

    Sounds like Microsoft Security Essentials hit the nail on the head then. My favorite one cause I hardly notice it!

    And about the overbearing... Norton used to think everything was a virus.

    So basically, it seems like there isnt really a need for AV, as long as you know how to be careful of links, view email addresses correctly...

    Have cookies replaced viruses? Our data is constantly becoming siphoned away anyways; my thinking is that viruses make more sense for illicit purposes like blackmail/theft, or running scripts to make money (using other people's energy and computing power for free)

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    Quote Originally Posted by lolskilla View Post
    Sounds like Microsoft Security Essentials hit the nail on the head then. My favorite one cause I hardly notice it!

    And about the overbearing... Norton used to think everything was a virus.

    So basically, it seems like there isnt really a need for AV, as long as you know how to be careful of links, view email addresses correctly...

    Have cookies replaced viruses? Our data is constantly becoming siphoned away anyways; my thinking is that viruses make more sense for illicit purposes like blackmail/theft, or running scripts to make money (using other people's energy and computing power for free)
    The browser is definitely another thing to secure, I don't know that cookies are a danger specifically but ads and tracking services as well as insecure HTTP connections are all things to watch out for.

    My setup for web browsing is latest Firefox running uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere, as far as I have seen this addresses the majority of security concerns on the web

    Taking it one step further you could use things like NoScript and LibreJS but they are much more aggressive and tend to neuter the functionality of a lot of webpages, so I've never been able to stand keeping them enabled for very long

    There's also Tor of course for near-complete anonymity but unless you are pursuing illegal content or attempting to subvert censorship I wouldn't see much reason to use it. You'll find the odd service that exposes itself over Tor (The Pirate Bay is a well-known example) so it might be useful to learn how to set up & operate it, maybe it'll come in handy for a very extreme edge case someday.
    Last edited by KeepBotting; 02-06-2019 at 08:54 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by KeepBotting View Post
    The browser is definitely another thing to secure, I don't know that cookies are a danger specifically but ads and tracking services as well as insecure HTTP connections are all things to watch out for.

    My setup for web browsing is latest Firefox running uBlock Origin and HTTPS Everywhere, as far as I have seen this addresses the majority of security concerns on the web

    Taking it one step further you could use things like NoScript and LibreJS but they are much more aggressive and tend to neuter the functionality of a lot of webpages, so I've never been able to stand keeping them enabled for very long

    There's also Tor of course for near-complete anonymity but unless you are pursuing illegal content or attempting to subvert censorship I wouldn't see much reason to use it. You'll find the odd service that exposes itself over Tor (The Pirate Bay is a well-known example) so it might be useful to learn how to set up & operate it, maybe it'll come in handy for a very extreme edge case someday.
    Thank you very much for this. Downloading those at the moment! Sounds like a good addition to vpn.

    For a while alot of american sites were busted for me due to GDPR... really made me think about how much background crap/trackers really are on every page. Particularly many "news" sites

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    @Keepbotting thanks for all the useful info.

    Ill be passing this onto my brother since he just bought a new PC. Matter of fact, the other day he was asking if he should get McAfee or Norton

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    i am using Norton

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    I just purchase a cheap 1-3yr key off eBay for Kaspersky.

    Works like a charm and does its job.

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    Quote Originally Posted by rx_tom View Post
    I just purchase a cheap 1-3yr key off eBay for Kaspersky.

    Works like a charm and does its job.
    That sounds cool.

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