I’ve often heard it said on Linux forums that it can’t hurt to run Linux anti-virus just in case a Linux virus does get released into “the wild.” I also see that almost all Windows users I know run anti-virus and\/or anti-spyware programs. <\/p>\n
Am I naive in asking “Why?” <\/p>\n
On the Linux front, yes, a Linux virus could get released into “the wild” at some point. Let’s say that happened on July 1 some year. Do you really think that on July 1 the Linux users with anti-virus will be more protected than the Linux users without anti-virus? The virus definitions would be updated on that day and enforced before the virus could do any damage? And if the definitions are updated on July 2 or July 3, couldn’t the Linux users without anti-virus just install the anti-virus within minutes? What extra protection does Linux anti-virus offer you? As for Linux anti-virus supposedly preventing you from forwarding viruses onto Windows users, how about just not forwarding people attachments you yourself did not create? <\/p>\n
More importantly, does anti-virus or anti-spyware really do anything in Windows? I don’t use Windows regularly at home any more, but the few times I have booted into it, I haven’t contracted noticeable malware. And I do use Windows regularly at work, and I don’t have any malware either there, even without anti-malware programs running. <\/p>\n
Nevertheless, I have a lot of friends and family members who continue to get viruses and spyware on their systems with noticeable slowdown, mysterious processes running, programs that won’t uninstall or shut down. Do these people have anti-*** running with the latest definitions updated? Hell, yes. <\/p>\n
So my question to security experts out there (I am not one): does anti-*** software, particularly in Windows, do anything practical to prevent malware? Or does it just suck up more system resources? As far as I can tell, it’s better to not have anti-*** installed and just set up Windows with a limited user account than to have someone run as administrator and have all these useless anti-*** programs running and giving her a false sense of security. <\/p>\n
How does the senate vote?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve often heard it said on Linux forums that it can’t hurt to run Linux anti-virus just in case a Linux virus does get released into “the wild.” I also see that almost all Windows users I know run anti-virus and\/or anti-spyware programs. Am I naive in asking “Why?” On the Linux front, yes, a… Continue reading Does anti-malware do anything?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}