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%&&**^$$ Viruses!

That still exists? Wow I remember that back in the DOS/bulletin board days.

FWIW I have used AVG for years, no problems (YET.......)
 
Dancing David said:
Ryokan, unfortunately there is no place on the web that is virus free, especially small sites and blogs are great place to get malware, and school districts. Basically any place that does not have a full time security manager.
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If you're setting up a computer for someone else to use, yes. But for years I never ran any AV on my own machines, and I only have MSE now. No matter how non-virus free a website might be, viruses do not download and execute themselves.
 
I hate Firefox. I only use it because it's required for some things I do. Those same things also preclude the use of noscript and similar addons. Besides, I'm not convinced that using Firefox would have helped in this case since IE survived the attack while Firefox was disabled.
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You should the latest version of Firefox a chance, or at least Chrome. I suspect that Firefox was disabled once your machine was infected because it is much harder to infect than IE. If for no other reason than IE is the primary target of most viruses.

Also, one of my neighbors runs two virus programs because one never catches everything.
 
Rat said:
If you're setting up a computer for someone else to use, yes. But for years I never ran any AV on my own machines, and I only have MSE now. No matter how non-virus free a website might be, viruses do not download and execute themselves.
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Yes but you run all sorts of script blocks, no?
 
Dancing David said:
Yes but you run all sorts of script blocks, no?
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All sorts? I have NoScript, certainly. I wouldn't be without it for aesthetic reasons as much as security ones. Even without that, I certainly wouldn't have, for example, PDFs or Java apps run automatically, again more because it's an annoyance. I guess Flash has been an issue for the last couple of years, but I would be using FlashBlock if NoScript didn't already block it.

So yes, I would advise NoScript. It's perhaps annoying for the first few days, but you soon don't notice it most of the time, and the times you do notice it are when someone links to, say, a news article, and you realize that that one page is running scripts from two dozen different domains.
 
IllegalArgument said:
You should the latest version of Firefox a chance, or at least Chrome. I suspect that Firefox was disabled once your machine was infected because it is much harder to infect than IE. If for no other reason than IE is the primary target of most viruses.
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Read what I wrote above. I had the next to most recent version of Firefox (it hadn't auto-updated to 15 yet), and now I have the latest. I have to use it on a near-daily basis. I still don't like it.

Also, one of my neighbors runs two virus programs because one never catches everything.
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I used to do that on my old machine, but people keep saying that's a bad idea. Some folks on this forum gave some very good reasons for not running 2 antivirus programs at once, e.g. systems files getting bolluxed if both programs happen to run a scan at the same time. So, I decided to just run the one program on this machine.

Rat said:
All sorts? I have NoScript, certainly. I wouldn't be without it for aesthetic reasons as much as security ones. Even without that, I certainly wouldn't have, for example, PDFs or Java apps run automatically, again more because it's an annoyance. I guess Flash has been an issue for the last couple of years, but I would be using FlashBlock if NoScript didn't already block it.

So yes, I would advise NoScript. It's perhaps annoying for the first few days, but you soon don't notice it most of the time, and the times you do notice it are when someone links to, say, a news article, and you realize that that one page is running scripts from two dozen different domains.
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I'm glad you clarified that, because for a moment there I thought you'd lost your mind. 'Cause goodness knows that none of us has ever visited a site just to have something start downloading and installing itself. :rolleyes:
 
Ryokan said:
I don't use any form of virus protection on my pc - no anti-virus, not firewall, etc.

I prefer just avoiding getting viruses in the first place.
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Sometimes I like to play in the rain, so I need to wear a raincoat.
 
CelticRose said:
I used to do that on my old machine, but people keep saying that's a bad idea. Some folks on this forum gave some very good reasons for not running 2 antivirus programs at once, e.g. systems files getting bolluxed if both programs happen to run a scan at the same time. So, I decided to just run the one program on this machine.
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Yes you should not run two AV programs at the same time, but you can have M-bam on a machine and not have it active in real time mode and just run it for scans.

What you don't want to do is have say AVG and MSSE installed at the same time.
 
In addition to using MSSE, Firefox w/NoScript, I usually recommend that creating a separate admin account with password. Set your usual day to day account to limited mode. Even though the UAC will prompt you for most system changes, this will help mitigate the damage that an unchecked virus will do. Also, if you have Firefox, you'll notice that it's doing you a favor lately and checking the versions of various browser plugins. Be sure to keep things like Flash and Java up to date as there are exploits for these in the wild.

Ed.: Also, McAfee blows chunks. :)
 
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