online scanners in addition to an anti virus

As an extra i regularly do an online scan with some online scanners, just to be sure that my installed anti virus does its job like it should.

NOTE: i didn't start this topic, originally it was a remark at my post in "Anti-Virus Poll 2007" but i guess one of the moderators thought it was better to split and paste it here. It be so.

 

Re: Anti-Virus Poll 2007

and does it ? do its job that is ? Reading between the lines if you do extra scans
it suggests that your installed scanner is not finding anything ?

I'm not saying it isn't possible to get a virus or malware but unless visting the so called dark side I still have to wonder (a) how people manage to get get spyware and viruses on their machines and (b) why so many have so many security programs and still seem to end up infected.

I'm not being critical - I do the same myself - run the odd on demand spyware or virus program but apart from finding the odd false positive I find it pretty much a waste of time.

 

Re: Anti-Virus Poll 2007

Yes. One one of my pcs i have eTrust installed. It was already installed when i bought it. Because it is very light (it's not their suite or EZ) i kept it. Now every review is disastrous for eTrust, so i am always curious...

 

Re: Anti-Virus Poll 2007

Well i give you a REAL example. If you download a trial from Kingdia, which seems a normal company, you will(!) get infected with a trojan downloader. Only 3 scanners found it: Kaspersky, F-secure & Dr.Web.

I was so astonished that i tried it myself. I even thought that it must be a false positive & so i sent the files to F-secure, Kaspersky. Less than 2 hours later (on a Sunday!) i got an answer from Kaspersky to confirm the infection. What a great company, Kaspersky is!

Kingdia was also very amazed but admitted it. They will fix it as soon as possible.

Moral: use different scanners (e.g: online).