I was asked a question by a friend today, as to whether I thought it was worthwhile to continue paying the annual £50 virus update subscription fee. I do not use any Anti-virus software and never have and wondered why not.
Observations:-
1. Most viruses these days do not seem to destroy your machine or data….. your data is a primary reason to have virus protection installed.
2. If the sort of people you send/receive emails to means that you are unlikely to get a virus or you rarely install applications, then your risk profile is very low. (e.g. most non power-users only use the computer for a few basic things)
3. If you do suspect you are infected then why not buy the virus software at that time?.
4. It depends how paranoid (or technically competent) you are? In the past 20 years of my computer usage, I can count the number of viruses I have had on one hand?
Conclusion:-
My conclusion is that it is much more preferable to just have a simple and effective BACKUP strategy (email, contacts, photos, documents etc)…….so that way you are protected no matter what happens to your data; virus, theft, malfunction…you have it backed up? Who cares whether your machine gets trashed by a virus-it can always be re-imaged/fixed. The critical thing is that you do not lose your data.
Hence you would be better to put the £50 pa to buy a memory flash memory card (or CD-ROM Burner) implement a regular/reliable backup system
What you DO NEED is personal firewall installed and there are very good free ones around (e.g. ZoneLabs)…Personal firewalls allow you to know which applications are accessing the internet (which stops these new breed of network viruses) and also protect you from attacks…
I suspect that most people are are focusing on the wrong problem and by not having a simple and effective backup strategy and personal firewall and are being much riskier with their personal data than having a virus scanner.
Point 2 of your reasoning is false (IMO).
Usually unskilled people act imprudently. They are the kind of people that open strange documents coming from unknown people.
They often dowloads programs from sites saying “get the last song for your cellular phone”.
They all use Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.
And finally, they are the ones that says “I don’t need an antivirus: I don’t fear loosing the data stored on my PC”.
Such kind of people (including a lot of my friends) is the main source of virus attack I receive.
By: Andrea Polci on October 15, 2004
at 3:45