Antivirus Poll

[starry]

2 minutes ago, poochyena said:

no, but an antivirus reduces your chance of a virus significantly more.

I am unsure of how to explain this to you because I dont really know where to begin.

[poochyena]

1 minute ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

False. I download files all the time and the last time I've never gotten a virus.

yea, and i've never gotten into a car accident, so I guess seat belts and air bags are useless.

1 minute ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

If you use caution while web browsing and don't download files from or go on websites that don't seem trustworthy you won't get viruses.

What magic is preventing files sent to you from friends and family from being viruses? What divine power prevents a trustworthy site from giving you a virus?

[WaggishOhio383]

1 minute ago, poochyena said:

yea, and i've never gotten into a car accident, so I guess seat belts and air bags are useless.

Seatbelts and airbags come pre-installed in your car. Windows Defender comes pre-installed on your PC. Last I checked, most people don't add aftermarket seatbelts to their car because they don't think the preinstalled ones are safe enough.

 

1 minute ago, poochyena said:

What magic is preventing files sent to you from friends and family from being viruses?

Having friends and family that I know well and trust to not send me viruses?

[Quackers101]

neither does, but if you know how to setup things. It will make you more secure.

Also sadly common sense doesn't go for bad security designs. Like anything around links, downloads etc. Sometimes just be lucky and it can be nice to have some extensions in your browser that helps you out at times. Like the times were there was viruses in ads etc.

 

Don't know if the new browser options to enable to only use HTTPS, if that does anything.

[WhitetailAni]

3 minutes ago, poochyena said:

What magic is preventing files sent to you from friends and family from being viruses?

Oh, so my dad is out to get me now?

[poochyena]

1 minute ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

Having friends and family that I know well and trust to not send me viruses?

How far does trust get you when their accounts are hacked and they start sending you viruses to download? This exact situation happened to me.

[Quackers101]

Just now, poochyena said:

How far does trust get you when their accounts are hacked and they start sending you viruses to download? This exact situation happened to me.

that was big on facebook maybe before at some point, sending bad links to all friends.

Same with E-mail today that could look legit.

[WhitetailAni]

2 minutes ago, poochyena said:

How far does trust get you when their accounts are hacked and they start sending you viruses to download? This exact situation happened to me.

Any smart person will be sus of their family member sending them a bunch of links and executables all of a sudden.

[WaggishOhio383]

3 minutes ago, poochyena said:

How far does trust get you when their accounts are hacked and they start sending you viruses to download? This exact situation happened to me.

1. My family members and friends never send me links to download random files
2. If they did randomly do that, I wouldn't download whatever it was without personally checking in with them to see what it is.
3. If you really know a family member or friend well, you should be able to tell when someone has broken into their account and is impersonating them to get you to download malicious files.

[poochyena]

4 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

Any smart person will be sus of their family member sending them a bunch of links and executables all of a sudden.

"""a bunch of"""
all it takes is one link or one download. Would you really be suspicious if a family member send you a file like they always do?

4 minutes ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

My family members and friends never send me links to download random files

well, good for you? Its common among my friends at least. especially images and video.

5 minutes ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

If you really know a family member or friend well, you should be able to tell when someone has broken into their account and is impersonating them to get you to download malicious files.

how? If all they did was post a link or download file, I wouldn't find that suspicious, they do that every single day.

[Tan3l6]

1 minute ago, poochyena said:

all it takes is one link or one download.

it only takes a fool to click on a link without real context.

Or actually there is context, but very lets say "odd" - "look my vacation pictures"; "you won a loto" etc.

[starry]

15 minutes ago, poochyena said:

How far does trust get you when their accounts are hacked and they start sending you viruses to download? This exact situation happened to me.

Having isolated images of your system is the best way to deal with viruses.

Here are the precautions and advantages ive given myself with security to make my position more clear to you:

-My main OS is Manjaro Linux, linux has a very low number of viruses built for it that are targeted at non-enterprise stuff.

- I keep isolated backup images of my system on an external driver, that i can load up to restore any time I want, so even if a virus is installed on my system I can just load a backup and be back to business

- Anytime I happen to be on the sketchy part of the internet, I load up a virtual machine running tailsOS

- If a family member sends me an EXE file, Im not going to run it, because my family doesnt know what an exe even is, and its clearly a spoofed email or number or whatever

- Executing programs with images and gifs is usually designed for windows, so Im fine there, but I doubt it will do much if I do get caught like this, because like i said i have a backup

- I use a VPN very regularly

- I keep basically none of my important files on my OS installation drive, so ransom ware is basically a non-concern

- if I ever, for whatever reason, need to install a program that isnt from a website i recognize on a windows machine, I will test it on a windows VM first

-adblock

 

The chances of me getting a virus in this way are lower than they would be if i had an antivirus installed. To me, an antivirus is a piece of software for someone who doesnt understand where viruses come from and why the creators of them distribute them. They want bank info, they want to use your computer to mine crypto, etc. Keep anything of value out of their reach and you wont have to worry, because these black hat script kiddies would rather go after unsuspecting senior citizens than someone who is well versed in security.

 

And yes, I understand that the way I do security isnt perfect, but NO security system is perfect. If its a hunk of silicon with electricity going through it, it has a security vulnerability. Antivirus software's function, isnt to tighten security, its to aid people who dont understand the intricacies of it with being secure, which is why I simply just dont need it.

[WaggishOhio383]

2 minutes ago, poochyena said:

all it takes is one link or one download. Would you really be suspicious if a family member send you a file like they always do?

2 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Its common among my friends at least. especially images and video.

 

A download link for a virus would probably look a lot different than one for an image or video... Again, exercising common sense before downloading files could save you from making that mistake.

[poochyena]

Just now, WaggishOhio383 said:

A download link for a virus would probably look a lot different than one for an image or video

oh bless your heart. This just isnt true https://umbrella.cisco.com/blog/picture-perfect-how-jpg-exif-data-hides-malware

Viruses can hide just about anywhere and look completely safe.

 

 

[starry]

7 minutes ago, poochyena said:

oh bless your heart. This just isnt true https://umbrella.cisco.com/blog/picture-perfect-how-jpg-exif-data-hides-malware

Viruses can hide just about anywhere and look completely safe.

 

 

Its weird how you seem to not understand much about cybersecurity and then speak condescendingly to everyone on here. Really makes you very frustrating and uninteresting to speak to. Im going to ignore this thread, have a nice day.

[WaggishOhio383]

4 minutes ago, poochyena said:

oh bless your heart. This just isnt true https://umbrella.cisco.com/blog/picture-perfect-how-jpg-exif-data-hides-malware

Viruses can hide just about anywhere and look completely safe.

 

 

I'm done with this conversation. Guess I can't have a different opinion about whether I need antivirus? If you have friends constantly sending you files, then sure. Get an antivirus software if it makes you feel more safe. But for most people windows defender does more than enough.

[Quackers101]

talking about or going about in different ways is frustrating, and if both sides are talking a bit down on each other, in one way or another.

take a step back and take a breather.

 

but yes, like many systems or different areas already speak a lot of using backups, have backups even if more people dont like to do that.

Also that backups aren't always "safe" either, might depend on how you do backups? To attacks that can attack in so many ways for different outcome, and to what posion people pick. Like some cheap VPN that could do worse, or an anti-virus that might not be all that great and both could give an false sense of security?

[CommanderAlex]

1 hour ago, valdyrgramr said:

Kaspersky

My engineering professor at my college told us a story after they used Kaspersky and found out there was a backdoor planted in the program thanks to the country the developer is located in(look up where the developer is if your curious). He went to the president of the college and explained about that to him. Long story short, the whole college moved away from Kaspersky. 

[poochyena]

1 hour ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

But for most people windows defender does more than enough.

windows defenders is and antivirus

[WillLTT]

2 hours ago, Sir Asvald said:

Windows Defender and having common sense is the best thing to have! 

i agree with this. 

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Grand Admiral Thrawn said:

Microsoft Defender configured through ConfigureDefender.

Tested, recommended.

who now? ugh another third party soft. I hate those, 99% are trash tbh. 

 

Seriously though, what's wrong with windows defender? I mean besides that it never finds anything but false positives like trainers, sometimes even just random mod files and that's about it... 

which is where my double approach comes into play, I always check with defender and if it thinks it found something I double check with malwarebytes... which then will basically always tell me "Pup" which is fine because I want the Pup, I need it, that's why I dl it, I know what it does, it's not unwanted at all, but at least it tells me in these cases every thing is fine cause it's just a Pup, and not a trojan, or miner, etc. 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, SpiderMan said:

My engineering professor at my college told us a story after they used Kaspersky and found out there was a backdoor planted in the program thanks to the country the developer is located in(look up where the developer is if your curious). He went to the president of the college and explained about that to him. Long story short, the whole college moved away from Kaspersky. 

My Russian IT "tutor" told me a similar story - he's totally into this stuff with testing AV software etc btw, he also thinks Kaspersky makes a lot of viruses nowadays because no one really makes them anymore to prevent going out of business... however, he still recommends it because "it's actually good". But that was enough for me to convince me to never use this crap, also I tried it once it basically took the whole pc hostage, no, no, no, tyvm lol ~

[Spotty]

Moved to programs, apps, and websites and removed the link to external survey. If you want you can add a poll to the post using the forums built in polling option.

[Mark Kaine]

34 minutes ago, Grand Admiral Thrawn said:

I do not understand what you tried to point out there.

oh, just that a lot of third party software I've tried is buggy as hell and I don't like it therfore (nvidia inspector, nvidia driver slimming utility, discord... to name a few...) 

 

Doesn't mean every third party / garage software is bad, I just rather avoid them if possible. 

 

37 minutes ago, Grand Admiral Thrawn said:

ConfigureDefender is an open source tool that makes it easier to configure the software without the need to go to each individual registry record or searching through Group Policy.

Ok, I see, but does it actually make it detect more things? I think that's maybe its biggest weakness, or maybe it's the false positives... otherwise I don't know what needs tweaking it's super lightweight already? 

[CommanderAlex]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

That's far from the truth.  You do know Kaspersky hates Putin, right?  Your professor is likely just fear mongering due to location.  Should we trust any company because all governments collect meta data?  The US Government started a fear mongering campaign, and basically is acting like any company that isn't American can't be trusfted.  It's one, not a backdoor, and you have to opt in to these things.  Ya know when SW asks you about error and sending other data to servers to improve or backup?  That's all it is.  Sure, the servers are in Russia because it's a Russian company, but Kaspersky is far from buddy buddy with Putin and Co.  So, that's a pretty bold claim that's very unlikely.

Again, that's just anecdotal from what my professor said. I'm sure many companies collect a lot of information about who we are that we are too blind to even recognize.