I think im ready to go AV free, or am I?

I am of the firm belief that I no longer need active antivirus, i use Avira pay version, and that I will be fine with common sense and online virus scanners and Bufferzone Pro.

now i have never had any security issues because of what i hope is common sense and pretty pedestrian surfing habits. I always scan programs using Virustotal and Jottie etc.. before install

I use an external router as well but will keep Comodo firewall, maybe. Avira has only given me a few warnings and it was always for java stuff which i assume is malware but not something really nasty. I'll keep the Malwarbytes on-demand to.

what do ya think? am i in for a rude awakening?

 

Should'nt think so, you still have sufficient protection with what you're using, if your happy with it, stay with it, and don't listen to scare stories, then you'll be fine

 

I think one can do without an AV real time, I went for long periods without one, but in the end if there are no slowdowns from the active guard I thought I may as well have it on. I'm also wondering where's all the malware people are talking about.

Just in case you may not be aware, you can easily uninstall Avira's guard module so that Avira will load on the tray only as a scanner. It is like not having it but ready for a file scan.

 

I'm also wondering how can I unintentionally come across them...

I guess people those get malware are doing something illegal or wrong.
In that case, malcontent(person) gets malware... so funny

 

Some get malware from not updating their av or letting it lapse after buying a new pc.Some get malware from being tricked and not knowing better,others get infected from deliberately testing malware and seeing if their av will protect them

 

Hi ellison64, thank you for explaining me how.

I have never been warned about an unintentional malware discovery by AV/Anti spyware/HIPS for my entire life.

I has been asked by my friends or such to examine their PCs numerous times due to their machine was slow (especially startup time),
Yet the cause of slowness has always been a combination of Ask Toolbar or PC-Tools Spyware Doctor or something like that.

And one of my friend's windows-XP had had no security except Windows Firewall for more than 5 years, and he is surfing porn sites heavily.
Yet, I couldn't find anything malware-like when I examined his PC with several scanner and task manager watching some months ago.

So, malware infected system is really uncommon for me.
Maybe I and those around me have been just lucky until this point

 

I usually clean up friends or members of familys pcs at least once a week.Its usually the fake avs that get through ,and most of them had an active av at the time.I guess they visit sites and then click on links that say scan my pc for security risks (they think they are being security conscious by doing so),which then results in the fake av installations that usually beats all avs at some point.I got caught myself in the past ,with a ramnit worm.It got transferred from an infected laptop onto a usb stick of mine.I forgot about it ,and inserted the usb stick ,and watch ramnit destroy avast in about a minute.I had an image program so re-imaged my laptop.It was funny to watch avast popup every second quarantining changed .exe files until it started to quarantine its own infected .exe files.Imaging is a must for me.

 

Once a week! That's very frequent.

BTW, I got an idea why I and friends haven't been infected by malwares by reading your post.

I know those ads which saying that my computer has risks.
And they (and whole lot of fishy stuff) are mostly shown in the pages written in English.
Here in Japan, almost no one is interested in English pages, so they might not come across those ads as many times as people reading English pages daily.

This might be the reason we are not infected so much...!

 

If you know what you are doing and is really disciplined, you'd be surprised to learn that av is actually not necessary. That router and comodo firewall should be more than sufficient.

Problem is, people rely too much on jotti or virustotal, close an eye to install cracks, run keygens and so on. They know the risks but still risk it. Bearing in mind, a lot (malwares) are put out fully aware by sources that they are still undetectable.

Even having hips or ids, people just allow it as time goes on its would just become a habit.


That said, best is you take some time and try out linux. Now, that would be a rude awakening and realize that you had in fact being compromised by the os itself.

 

Well, I was once in your position, I tried for a few days, then I let go and I tried again, I was scanning daily with dozens of engines, but they never found anything. Then I scanned once a week, then I stopped using a firewall and now I hardly scan at all, maybe once in a few months. First days are gonna be tough though, get a good sleep.

 

My honest opinion is that, if you got to ask to others if you're ready to go without an antivirus, then probably you aren't. If you were, would you need to ask?

 

I'd drop this and just use a local scanner - should be much faster.

 

Perhaps the lesson for them is to learn NOT to do such things.

 

If you firmly believe that you don't need an AV, then dump your AV and whatever protection you believe you don't need.

As for me I'll stick with my security set up.

Jerry

 

thank you to everybody for commenting

I didn't even last 24 hours before installing Avira back on my system but left out the web protection and mail protection engines. got rid of Bufferzone Pro after I noticed it would become pay version after 30 days.

I really liked Fedora, way better than Ubuntu and Mint. I just found Win7 easier to use. Maybe I'll go back....maybe

 

While using the security programs I always wonder that i don't need them,
in 98% cases i am surfing clean but in that 2% i am not sure & that 2% were enough for my pc to get infected, I guess you have never been infected? You don't stick pendrives in your pc !! You don't surf illegal warez sites !!
I have seen people getting infected with reliable sites & just one <10kb exe is able to mess your pc big time. Even with your any firewall (not to mention just COMODO but all the Firewalls) are never 100% reliable. Just one Trojan downloader & welcome all the salities, trojan programs in your pc. It would just take less than 30min for sality like program to infect all your pc's exe and it would be pain in your whole body(not just in A$$), if you have around 1TB of hard disk. I don't have to scan my whole pc every month with current security setup, i don't remember the exact time when i did perform the full Hard Disk checkup.
And jotties malware & other online malware scan are not that much reliable, i myself have scanned so many exes on these sites & while it saying that 1-2-3-4 AV is not able to catch the given trojan or Virus, while scanning the same file with that particular AV installed on pc. The AV is easily able to find that Virus (with the same definition shown on the online scan sites).
Talking about the latest AV Programs, I guess they are so light enough that they works very well on single core CPU's, just adding aditional 3-4 sec. in your startup-shutdown. Well if i am able to get a protection by just losing some seconds, I am happy with that!!!
If you don't want to install any AV programs I guess linux is a better option!!
Just check my signature & u will be amazed if i say i am running it on P4 2.8 Ghz 1gb ddr1 ram- & no slowdowns at all

 

. I think you should.

 

Isnt bufferzone pro for personal use free?
http://www.trustware.com/BufferZone-Pro-Features/

 

Actually getting infected is not that simple as AV companies make it sounds. You can visit porno, warez webpages and so on and still be clean even without AV.
AV is not just about "aditional 3-4 sec. in your startup-shutdown", it slows down PC noticable, especially laptops, you would be amazed how fast it runs without it.

I have a friend, who is a huge fan of porno, he has hundreds of GBs, he uses warez on daily basis and his PC is clean as a snow without any security, only Windows Firewall, and he does not even know, nor care, what a virus is. It probably helped, that I have disabled some services, disabled IE, installed Chrome and so on, but who knows.

 

I dont go to the dark side but me & sis share usbs and we got bit with sality awhile back. Probably from downloading study notes we thinks. Who knows.

But it was painful as we were totally infected in no time as we didn't have AVs. It was one bite, once. But major surgery was called for. It was horrible. much pain.

So now I tell everyone to at least use Pandacloud as a minumum. There's no drag. And at least you got something looking out for sality and its buddies.

 

If you installed the AV after such a short time, you might not be ready yet I completely understand, if you're like me, you don't know what's legit and not just by looking at a download, you don't know if that pesky ad is trying to drop anything on to your system (though Comodo will almost certainly say so if it happens). Perhaps what you need is a good sandbox to play in. One not too complicated, but has just enough configurability to keep you safe and sound. Perhaps look into the free version of Sandboxie? I would recommend Returnil, but I'm afraid having to reboot all the time will get on your nerve maybe.

With Sandboxie, Comodo and MBAM (I'd even go so far as to say try having Hitman Pro free for your file scans), you're pretty darn tight as far as security goes. You didn't mention browsers, but all of them have ad-blocking of some type (some more effective than others of course). Add that in, and you're very prepared for the world of the internet.

 

For me, deciding to go without a real time AV was easy and it was not something that I thought about for a long time. Actually, deciding to go w/o the real timer was a decision that I made on the spot, right after upgrading to MSE2 and not liking how it behaved on my XP. Thankfully, I felt ready and after uninstalling MSE, I did not look for a replacement.

Just like I did, you ll know if you are ready to go w/o the real timer, theres no need for you to ask. If you need to do scans every day or every week or if you feel naked by not using an AV, it would mean that you are not ready.

Bo

 

MrGump, are you running Fedora or Win 7?

 

On the other hand, that's quite true. But if you determine cracks/warez as clean by running a scan with jotti, metascan or whatever, I think its more like cross the fingers, hope for the best. That said, you'd also be surprised to find that many of them are truly harmless.

Porn sites, I agree. Propaganda/fud/lazy excuses to sell more av products. They are as risky/safe as all other sites.