I’m ashamed – very ashamed

Josh Stodola

9/5/2007 6:16:26 PM #

I am also "that guy".  I don't fiddle with any anti-virus crap becuase, like you said, they are sluggish performers.  I still have yet to receive a virus (knock on wood), and even though I have just read your post, I still will not install one.  

It just seems to me that all viruses are avoidable.  I am going for that perfect track record!

Aaron Fischer

9/5/2007 7:19:10 PM #

I caught a virus Sunday even with some anti virus software.  The best is it was a Trojan and the AVG software alerted me to its presence.  It would appear to be benign but I got this from visiting the wrong site on a fully patched vista ie 7 environment.  Its better to have something and get a warning before your computer is owned or you find a key logger.

Víctor

9/5/2007 7:33:25 PM #

I thought that I was the only crazy guy thinking like that.

Frank Hadder

9/5/2007 8:53:01 PM #

At least you don't know how you got it. My first virus (of 10 years) I forced upon myself. I downloaded a file I knew I shouldn't have. The file would have installed a virus if I was using Internet Explorer but it wouldn't run in Firefox. No problem, I did a google search and found that I could rename the file to a .bat file and then run it. And yes, I actually did that. If you thought YOU were foolish...

Denny Ferrassoli

9/5/2007 9:39:26 PM #

Same happened to me a few months ago. It was using my box as a spam relay :\ It was hellish to remove too!

There's no big deal in getting an anti-virus. I use Bit Defender after many trials with other AVS'. Norton was by far the worst in terms of performance ~ Abused the hell out of my memory!

Harsha

9/5/2007 10:49:05 PM #

Mads, sorry to hear that even happened to me few months ago. Later I installed a fee software called "sandboxie". Google it, is a cool[must have] tool. Use it and you will not need a antivirus software anymore.

Jason Stangroome

9/5/2007 11:34:49 PM #

Switch over to a non-admin user account for all your day to day work and continue living the virus free life. Two years running and still secure.

www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000891.html

Donn Felker

9/6/2007 3:43:28 AM #

Just like Jason posted above, Jeff Atwood has had a few posts about this topic. I'm also one of "those guys" but thats mainly for my home machine. My work machine has to be up to date due to consulting. But I've had a virus. IT SUCKS, but still its only 1 in the past 4 years. Not a bad track record. I'm willing to risk it. I back all of my stuff up anyway. No worries man!

spybot

9/6/2007 4:20:26 AM #

Try use spybot and you will see how naive you was

Dan

9/6/2007 5:04:33 AM #

Another vote for non-admin account, I use an encrypted script for changing the user under is running my app launcher.
Sandboxie as someone has suggested is a nice program

Claus

9/6/2007 6:18:25 AM #

It’s not funny alt all. But because I know you personally and you told me months ago that this only happens if don’t know what you are doing… I can’t hold it anymore – I told you so, oh I told you so … Sorry, I hope nothing of digital value to you is lost.  

Kam Lagan

9/6/2007 8:37:38 AM #

I wouldn't liken it the way you have.  I would liken it to walking up and down the same street for 5 years and being mugged.  Mugging you don't have any control over.  Tripping and falling you do.  As hard as you try you will never catch everything and all for the sake of a little anti virus service?  Does the loss in speed REALLY degrade your production?

James Skemp

9/8/2007 2:20:39 PM #

I'd definitely try to stay as far away from Norton products as you can. I've been using use Grisoft's free AVG software for ... 7 years (?) and haven't had any issues, personally, with infestation since then.

If you get the right AV software, you won't even notice it's there ...

@Harsha:

Thanks for the info; I'm gonna give this a look over.

laowang

9/10/2007 2:44:21 PM #

hehe,bucuoa.

Carl

9/17/2007 1:07:32 PM #

"If you walked the same streets for 5 years to and from work and suddenly fell on the pavement and hurt your knee, would you then start wearing knee pads?"

Probably not, but you can bet that the next time I walked down that street, I would avoid the dodgy paving slab that caused me to trip the last time. However, because you don't actually know which slab you tripped over, that makes it a little more difficult.

What would really happen is that you would just pay more attention to where you were walking from then on, however, this is again a problem because while you are looking down at the pavement, some guy jumps out of an alley and steals your wallet.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the streets they are a changing; new threats are out there all the time and the fact that you are aware of some of them may in fact make you more susceptible to the others.

I know that running AV is a resource hog, and that it would be nice if we didn't have to do it - but I really think that it is the safest option, and we can deal with the perf hit - by throwing a faster processor at it or buying a raptor hdd.

Seatbelts in cars constrict you when you are driving and make you more uncomfortable than you really should be, but rather than not wearing one, the sensible ones among us (and car manufacturers) try to alleviate this by making the seat more comfortable, the engine quieter or the radio snazzier - to take your mind away from the fact that you are wearing a seatbelt.

Basically, a thing to remember if you decide to go the AV route is that not all AV is created equal - there is a vast difference in both the resource intensiveness and the effectiveness between brands. Best thing to do is to have a months trial of each and see if there are any that you can live with - don't bother reading the majority of reviews on AV software because there seems to be a high occurrence of non-disclosure and the most of them are funded by one of the big players.

C

Paul Tumelty

12/9/2008 11:47:27 AM #

The thing which worries me somewhat, and forces me into using AV software is that you could be carrying one for months without ever having any noticeable effects. Who knows what is running silently in the background.

In the last 12 months I had my ebay/paypal account compromised and i'm still no wiser to this day how they ever got hold of my details. I was convinced there must have been some sort of virus on my machine, but never found anything.

The point im making is just because you think you have a clean machine, its not a guarantee there isnt something nasty lurking. Who knows how many viruses we all might have had in the last 5 years without even knowing it!