Computer anti virus

[CNP]

Originally Posted by sewerrat

Well I just logged into my Norton account, and I pay $131.00 a year, it protects 2 lab tops 2 IPads and 2 IPhones.
Renewal is due January 2022 so it’s a bit pricey to say the least.
I have had Norton for 6 years or so with automatic payment and I’m sure it went up every year .

I have never heard of anyone running av on iphones or ipads. I own two laptops a desktop and two iphones at home. Total after market av bill? $0.00. I don't and won't buy and or install any av software on my stuff. Windows 10/11 defender is sufficient for pc's. Iphones? I'm scratching my head on that one.

[bat119]

Bitdefender came with my laptop I paid the extortion money for a couple years than quit a year ago, never had a problem and after I deleted the program the popup offers stopped.

If you visit porn, gambling or scammer sites maybe more protection is required

[Arty]

I've been using clamav for a long time. Works great, runs just fine and is supported on Solaris 11.3 (x86_64) (from opencsw.org), Linux (packaged into distro), and FreeBSD (from FBSD ports) although I haven't tried that one in awhile. Never any charges/payments required to anyone of course. Presently owned by cisco.

Was also available for awhile for OpenVMS (DEC Alpha) but apart from a couple well-known benign worms exploiting default system account passwords in the 1980s and long since patched, there's never been a 'virus' on native VMS files mostly due to extensive designed-in security levels. The most recent OS release (9.2, in 2021) runs on Alpha hardware (as well as x86-64 now), but no virus has ever been detected on recent OpenVMS on Alpha hardware so no current (2021) projects are known to exist to port clamav onto 9.2. It would make a great network area storage (NAS) server but all files put onto it would have to be scanned first. The Solaris version however can scan for malware on its own files and guest files.

So having Solaris as a NAS server to connect client machines to via NFS allows you to launch a clamav virus scan on the Linux client and any of its NFS-mounted zfs pools on the Solaris machine. 'cron'-launching clamav on the Solaris NAS covers any files in the root pool or user pools of that machine, including attached offsite backup pools. So you can keep most user files from all sorts of attached machines on Solaris zfs pools on one NAS machine, and back up any tightly-bound client app user files to it as well. Together with SAS-based zfs raid and offsite-based 'zfs send' snapshots you get a very bulletproof data protection setup. In 10 years I've not had a single positive virus hit.

I've been thinking about firing up the Alpha server again now that OpenVMS 9.2 is out and stable, and setting up a similar configuration using FreeBSD nfs-mounted to it. The FreeBSD clients would launch clamav conceptually similarly to the Linux ones above, but no clamav would be needed on the Alpha server as it is passively immune. zfs however has more relevant admin features than anything in OpenVMS I'm aware of, so the Alpha would have to be pretty much an off-site storage box like an external hard drive instead.

So you end up with any solid multiuser GUI client front-end operating system/machine such as Suse Linux or FreeBSD set up with clamav virus-scanning, then nfs-connected to Solaris's zfs pools carrying most of the client systems' user data, which can also be virus-scanned periodically with Solaris' copy of clamav, and then zfs-snapshot backed up to the OpenVMS Alpha (or x86-64) server and an external drive as two different offsites. The client front-ends could even run a different virus scanner than Solaris so their files get scanned by two different AV softwares if you don't trust one or the other 100%.

[Sundancefisher]

If you are paying for Shaw internet, it comes with free mcafee.

Just down load it from shaw. Never had an issue.

[CptnBlues63]

I've been working in IT for over 25 years now. I've tried pretty much every antivirus product out there. For the last few years I've been using Windows Defender and have had no issues and have no complaints.

More than anything else, prevention is about being careful. Do not open attachments to emails unless you're expecting it. If it's coming from a friend, it's still suspect as they could have been hit with one that forwards itself to everyone in your address book. So if you get an email with attachment from a friend, find out if they meant to send it to you before you open it.....just to be safe.

Avoid websites with a high potential for malicious crap embedded in them. Porn sites are a favorite. I've hit a few non porn sites in the last couple years that had malicious code embedded in them and Defender found it and allowed me to kill that browser/tab without getting infected.

[rmatei]

Years back I used Viper out of Europe but my IT pros say Windows Defender is all the average home owner needs. Just keep checking for updates even if set on automatic. Think about it....would Microsoft take a chance on having a corrupt program...I think not.

[glen moa]

My laptop came with windows 10 and windows defender already installed. Problem is defender takes up a lot of power and slows my laptop to a crawl. You can’t switch defender off unless you have other antivirus running. I’d format it but I don’t have some of the other programs to reinstall.