Is It Really Necessary To Use An Antivirus?

 

Is It Really Necessary To Use An Antivirus?

Computer viruses have lived between us and our computers for more than 40 years. These malicious programs that seek to access our data to damage, steal, or simply annoy us; they have remained an immovable threat in the world of computing, becoming increasingly complex.

It's not just viruses that are a threat. The malware is any kind of software malware that infiltrates computers without our consent, and can take many forms: viruses, worms, Trojans, root kits , spyware , adware , etc. So if there are hundreds of thousands of threats waiting to infect and destroy us, doesn't the question we ask ourselves in the title of this article answer itself?

Yes and no.

We know that the operating system that is most affected by these threats is Windows, but this fact is not completely linked to the operating system itself, but to its users. The fact that Windows has been the most popular system on computers for decades has motivated malicious software creators to attack it heavily and take advantage of its many weaknesses.

One of the reasons why Windows became so popular is its ease of use and focus on the common user with little or no computer literacy. This feature has always been a double-edged sword, as it is precisely one of the reasons why these users are easy victims of malware. When the user acquires a minimum of knowledge about the proper use of a computer, these types of threats can be almost completely neutralized. It is not about closing the bridge, but about preventing people from jumping off it.

IS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO USE AN ANTIVIRUS?

The answer depends on the case. And to better answer it, we are going to individualize the possible scenarios.

In the case of a personal computer that is only used by its owner, and no one else has access to it. Antivirus protection will only be necessary if the user's usage habits require it. By this I mean, that if the user does not know how to use their computer, that is: they have irresponsible browsing habits, they open any email without suspecting that this prize of one million pounds may not be true, they click on any banner have the free word written; he enjoys the free pornography offered by the Internet, on sites full of disreputable advertising whereby he is tricked and taken through a loop infinity of erotic offers that hide "locked cat", and so on.

So you not only need an antivirus, you need someone to teach you how to use the computer, and soon. In the case of a shared computer, antivirus is almost always the rule, unless all users are fully competent beings with minimal knowledge of computer security, the more users touch a machine, the more risks.

The truth is that if we follow some practical advice to defend ourselves from malware, and as long as no one else has access to our computer than we do, the use of an antivirus running permanently on our system, consuming resources, can become completely unnecessary.

LIVING WITHOUT ANTIVIRUS

In my case, I have not installed an antivirus on my computer since approximately 2009-2010. Why? Because I don't need it. Antiviruses are heavy, costly and system-intensive software tools , because they remain vigilant by running all the time in the background. By following some of these tips below, you can also start your new life without antivirus, and use that extra memory for something more productive.

Don't be a "happy trigger”: you don't need to click on everything we see when we surf the Internet. In 99% of the cases when a banner ad says that something is "free", it is not. Do not download how much program offers you to solve problems on your computer, improve your Internet speed, free up space on your hard drive, get rid of phantom threats, scan your system for errors, add a screensaver with little fish, save a kitten in danger, achieve world peace, etc.

No, the answer is no. All these "wonderful offers" are just waiting for you to accept to infect yourself, through deceptive strategies, offering lies to access your computer and harm you.

Be suspicious - Email is one of the main gateways for malware. Do not open emails from unknown senders, especially when the email in question does not make sense to you. Banks never, ever request personal information in this way. Nobody gives money away on the Internet. You are not so lucky, the lotteries you never participated in will never send you thousands of dollars. If you don't know about it, don't click on that link. If you didn't request it, don't even look at it.

If you know the sender and the email asks you to download attachments, be sure to verify that the person actually sent you those files. Many times our acquaintances are infected with malware that sends emails with malicious content to all their contacts, to spread quickly. If you have no idea why Maria or Pedro would be sending you links to marketing courses, ask them before opening the email.

Promiscuity: if your computer is going to have relationships with other users, the ideal is to use protection. If you find yourself in the situation that a friend or colleague passes you some information on a removable storage medium, such as a pendrive, a SD card, or an external hard drive; you must bear in mind that these devices may be infected with some type of malware, which will pass to your computer as soon as you open it.

In these cases, having an antimalware tool to scan the device before opening it would be ideal. I recommend Spybot Search & Destroy. But there are tools to scan files online for viruses, like the great Total Virus, so you don't have to install anything on your computer.

Another incredibly simple way to remove infections from removable media is to open it from a Linux distribution. If you happen to have a dual-boot boot and you have a Linux distro installed on your computer, the best thing you can do is always open external devices from it. Simply deleting suspicious files, whose names do not make sense to the owner of the removable memory, is enough to get rid of them.

Maintenance : it can happen that no matter how much we protect ourselves, how good browsing habits we have, how ninjas we have become over time to find the tiny real download button on a site with 9 different buttons, our system is still infected . The malware has evolved so much that sometimes it is impossible to avoid it all. Therefore, although we can live life without an antivirus monitoring all the time, we cannot spend eternity without doing maintenance on our computer. The preventive maintenance can help in this case. And the combination of antimalware tools like Spybot Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes; they can clean our computer from bad bugs in a few minutes. In addition to offering immunization against thousands of other threats.