Sandboxie Free

I was just wondering since I have everything "Sandboxed" in Firefox, is any antivirus needed? I am new to the sandbox world and would love to hear what ya'll think.

 

Some say yes. Some say no. I say yes. Only because you have to worry about USB drives, downloaded files, stupid email attachments from friends.

 

For me personally,I could use sandboxie and nothing else and I'd be malware / virus free til the day the computer dies.

 

I'm not sure how everyone else does it, but I like to have a resident AV around to scan whatever downloaded files I choose to recover.
Entirely too lazy to use an on-demand scanner every single time I download something.

 

IMO, nope, you still can get virus when you run files you think are clean
I always like to have at least 1 Active AV

 

You can do everything with sandboxie. Browse, Open a program, Open pen-drive, Open attachments etc.
If you have a clean windows and if you install softwares from trusted source only then I don't think you need a AV. You can always use Virus Total is you find something very suspicious. But do use a firewall always.

 

I would recommend to use antivirus, viruses are often coming from pendrives and messengers and e-mail etc.

 

You would need some sort of on-demand scanner for downloads. Either have a resident av for that or something like Hitman Pro, Prevx, Malwarebytes or maybe that virustotal uploader.

 

Disable autorun/autoplay, and scan suspicious files.
Stay up-to-date. Use a good backup (preferably disk imaging).

Then you're completely covered.
Optionally you can include SRP, DEP, and the like.

 

Running Firefox in Sandboxie's DefaultBox boosts your system's protection against threats that might come through the browser, but I don't think that it provides 100% security. An AV (or better still a security suite) provides additional protection in case malware runs outside the sandbox - it may also zap any malware that it spots inside the sandbox.

Bear in mind that, depending on your sandbox settings, malware inside the sandbox may be able to read confidential data on your PC and send it out over the internet. (Although you can mitigate against this somewhat by tweaking the sandbox settings.) Also, there's nothing to prevent malware from interfering with other programs running inside the sandbox - and you only get a single sandbox with the free version of Sandboxie.

The paid version of Sandboxie (which I think is well worth having) allows you to have multiple sandboxes, each of which can be configured to be as restrictive as possible for individual programs (e.g., FF, IE, Outlook etc). And you can force removable drives to run inside a sandbox (although disabling autorun, as suggested by J_L is still the #1 security precaution to take there).

Even with all this, I personally still use a security suite augmented by Prevx in addition to Sandboxie. That's becuase I like to have several layers of security in case malware somehow gets through one layer. Also, it helps to protect me if I run a downloaded program outside the sandbox.

 

Sandboxie and Defense Wall are what keep me clean but I also use the
anti virus real time,like you, because I prefer the AV scans the recovered
files than having to use the on demand scanner often.
Bo