Too much of a good thing!

At the risk of wishing for something I don't really want, I would like to know if anyone else has experienced this. For the last few weeks (maybe 2 months now), I have not encountered anything in my threat logs. I have not received any notification that some little buggy has been zapped by NOD32. Not that I am wanting anything to happen but I am finding it a little strange that nothing untoward is being found on my machine. I am runing weekly scans with Blackspeare's settings and my computer is always on with NOD32 running. Am I the only person not being attacked or is NOD32 not picking up on these things for some reason? Best regards Jim

 

well im no exbert but you should try a test virus to see it its working and it should pick it up right away. but oddly i havent had anything in my threat log on my av f-secure some might say this is unrelated but maybe not so. if your a safe surfer maybe it has no viruses to block cos you dont go on any sites that give out viruses just a thought. i but oddly the other day on kaspersky forums my fav blocked some malware odvisaly some public forum virus so i know my av is working. I fell the sam way thou if it doesnt stop anything.

 

I haven't had an unexpected virus-warning for years. I think the whole virus-threat thing is highly overrated: Unless you're a heavy warez user or playing around with "hacking-tools" or regularly on the lookout for free porn or opening unknown mail attachements etc, you should be pretty safe.

 

Yes and no.

It is certainly true that many extrapolate the constant warnings in the media to a situation in which a blizzard of warnings in the expected norm, which I agree is not real life - months to years between real warnings should be the norm for most users.

It is not overrated in the sense that poor handling of that single infrequent event can cause very significant grief.

It is very worthwhile to take some level of protective measures, but it is very counterproductive to feel that one is constantly playing a cat-and-mouse game with a latent cyber-insurgency specifically targeting you as a single user. There is a difference between good sense and actions based on raw paranoia and I agree that there is all too much of the latter.

Blue

 

Thanks folks. I did try loading a virus test from Eicar.com and sure enough NOD32 picked it up and terminated the connection and correctly showed a threat log entry. I guess everything is fine. I think I must be one of those boring safe surfer types

 

Although the James Bond lifestyle has a certain weekend appeal...., I think most of us fall into that boring safe surfer category...., in fact, that's me over there.., to your left

Blue

 

I've had NOD for a little over two months also, in that time I have been alerted one time to a suspicious file trying to download on a website, which I terminated the connection immediately, ran a scan, then submitted the file sample to eset. Other than that, I have encountered no other threats as I use the internet. I am a very low risk user anyway and don't expect much activity out of NOD on a day to day basis, but, sure am glad it's covering my six...

I'd say it's a good thing to not have entries in your threat log. This would also indicate to me that you practice safe sufing habits. Periodically checking your antivirus with the eicar virus test will ensure your av is working properly.

Marc

 

I'm there with you as well! Warnings I've seen for at least the last 6 months (maybe closer to a year now) were false positives and test files (like EICAR file)...

 

Safe surfing is without any doubts the best way to avoid troubles, but it also depends on the browser one uses. Eversince I started using Opera (by all means I'm not trying to advertise!) I've never had one single alert from any of my security applications. E-mails are something else, and NOD saved my system many times from infected CDs given to me by other people.

I personally experienced a highly infected system (12 different viruses and more than 200 spyware objects) that's the reason I'm here, and you can't imagine my satisfaction (perhaps an obsession by now) to find my system always clean and pristine for the last 12 months.

 

Osaban, I think you are correct about the browser choices. I have used Firefox for more than a year now and I think that has a lot to do with my trouble free browsing. Cheers!

 

I don,t know what type of surfing u do, however I personally do safe surfing and I will be more surprized than u if I get even a single threat in my log over many months.

 

The safest way to find out if it's working properly or not is by using either Eicar or Bat Test File.
Copy the code into a .txt file and scan it / rightclick it.
It should be detected right away.

EICAR:

Code:

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

BAT TEST FILE:

Code:

@echo off
resident.bat