Does your anti-virus ever find any viruse ?

Assuming that you run Microsoft Windows on your computer, you now must have an anti virus software otherwise you’ll be continuously annoyed by a message reminding you that your computer is not safe.

So you follow the recommendations and go buy your anti-virus. Now you feel safe as the message has disappeared and your anti virus is telling you that the “active protection” is now on so you can rely on it and work in peace. Even better the anti virus updates himself in the background with the last virus definition.

This is the ideal world of course. I’ve been trying many virus softwares and I’m not using anyone since 2 years and my computer is free of viruses and I will attempt to explain why and probably convince you (who knows ?). Keep in mind that I’m mainly talking about real hard viruses that would have a real bad effect on your computer (I’m not considering spyware, cookies, ad blocking, etc.).

So why did I finally get rid of anti virus softwares ? Here is a list of cons (for pros just go on their website and check out what they tell you) :

1 - It significantly slows down my PC

For a major part of these softwares, they made my computer really, really slow for almost every action (file copying, moving, Internet surfing, email reception, etc.) and I hate that. Not to say that I didn’t want to through my machine for a new one after only a few months life. It also slow down the boot time of the machine and I hate that too. I know I’m not very patient.

I’m pretty sure that the wasted time costs more than the risk of getting a virus.

2 - Scanning process takes forever

I never got to finish a complete scanning process as it takes hours and hours. I mean a “complete” one because I don’t to go for the “quick scan” option a it will surely miss the viruses.

The only solution is to let the scan run during the night but It needs organization and I’m not organized. If this task is performed in the background you end up with an even slower machine.

3 - On demand scanning will never be efficient

If you need to trigger a scanning of all your hard disks to find viruses that means if you ever find a virus it is already too late and if you don’t find any virus that doesn’t mean you don’t have one, it’s just that it has been able to hide from your anti-virus. This applies to manual scanning as well to regular scheduled scanning.

During a scan, your anti-virus might find viruses off course but it usually contained in emails that were classified as spam but as it is still on the disk, the anti-virus find them.
4 - The antivirus never finds any virus

All good modern anti-virus have what is always referred to as “active protection” which is basically a feature that will theoretically block the threat on the fly as it’s trying to infect your system. Believe me or not but I’ve been running antiviruses for years and these never alerted me about any virus being blocked on the fly. That made sense when computers were for the most part not including any firewall protection. Today Windows as a built-in one and the Internet providers integrate a firewall in the modem or ADSL boxes they provide.

5 - Knowing the threat is a lot more efficient

Ok so of course if you don’t have an antivirus and know nothing about viruses, the treat will be very high. Knowing your enemy is the best protection against viruses. Here are some advices:

• Use a firewall with all ports closed except if you really need to open one. Windows Firewall is fine but a hardware firewall (NAT router for instance) is a lot better. This eliminates 70% of the threat. Life duration of you windows pc on the Internet without updates and without firewall will be something around 30 minutes.
• Do not open any email that is not from someone you know and look to good to be true. With time you learn to identify those. Having a good email client software will also help as most of the spam will be filtered.
• Be careful when downloading files or software over the Internet or on a peer to peer network. On the Internet, only use websites that could be trusted. Files that you download over peer to peer networks are often full of viruses.
• Be careful while chatting using a live messaging system with the files that people send you.
• Do all the Microsoft windows mandatory updates. This could be configured to be automatic. The majority of viruses that are widely spread are usually old and have been democratized enough to be used by any person that knows a little bit about computers. They are usually against Windows. So as these are old, the updates will protect you.
• Do scanning of your computer from to time to time (every few months) using an online anti-virus tool. This is usually more efficient than using your already installed one.

These are well known advices I think but I wanted to remind them. Now you can consider your PC as safe !