Comments on: And we should trust our computer security to you?

By: walt

walt — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 23:31:14 +0000

I guess I think of “anti-virus” and “malware-killer” as being the same product. I’m migrating to Microsoft Security Essentials and the Windows firewall, and we’ll see how it goes. Maintaining multiple subscription products is really a bother… and, of course, “a little update time” depends on what else you need to be doing at that point. I’m certainly not arguing with your decision *not* to have a name-brand security suite!

By: ahniwa

ahniwa — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:27:18 +0000

Your points are valid, of course, but that’s exactly why I’d argue against a protection suite and for standalone products instead. Keep your anti-virus and your firewall and your malware-killer in separate baskets, so to speak, and it won’t be such a big deal if one malfunctions or, in this case, needs to take a little update time.

Re: your more recent post, McAfee sounds like a nightmare and now I’m double-glad that I don’t bother to buy “premium” security suites. It may work well for you, but it really seems like a racket to me.

By: walt

walt — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:12:40 +0000

[Rescued from spam: Spam Karma 2 thinks tumblr is a wasteland of spam...]

Honestly? I encountered malware when checking out a supposed liblog. If you disable your protection suite, “malware scanners, built-in Windows protection, and antivirus” simply aren’t there. Sure, the router and Windows firewalls are there.

Would I be this cautious? Hard to say, but it’s not my machine. Is my wife being paranoid? No, I don’t think so; based on past experience, “the virus-bots are waiting just outside the door for that antivirus to go away” isn’t too far off the mark. And, as I say, the work she does on her notebook requires her to visit sites that might be sketchy by some standards. (Consider the first line of this comment: at least one plugin considers tumblr to be sketchy.)

By: ahniwa

ahniwa — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:48:46 +0000

Farce, comedy, tragedy … it seems like an overreaction. Not in terms of being frustrated with McAfee support – by all means, I was frustrated just reading about it, and I’ve devoted similar blog posts in the past to the same purpose.

But honestly, having to uninstall your antivirus for a short period of time isn’t likely to kill your machine. I don’t feel like the virus-bots are waiting just outside the door for that antivirus to go away. There’s a lot of redundancy in protection from most threats (if you’re not actively surfing questionable sites), in terms of hardware firewalls, software firewalls, malware scanners, built-in Windows protection, and antivirus.

If you’re really concerned, you could always download the new package (but not install), run a full scan, unplug from the web, uninstall the old package, restart, install the new package, plug back into the web, and you’re done.

I’m probably missing some of the complexities here, but it still feels a little paranoid, to me.