• You Don’t Need to Buy Antivirus Software

    From carl@mit.net@21:1/5 to All on Sun Aug 1 21:25:36 2021
    You Don’t Need to Buy Antivirus Software

    April 21, 2020

    Excerpts - full article url below.

    https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/best-antivirus/

    We set out to do a standard Wirecutter guide to the best antivirus
    app, so we spent months researching software, reading reports from
    independent testing labs and institutions, and consulting experts on
    safe computing. And after all that, we learned that most people should
    neither pay for a traditional antivirus suite, such as McAfee, Norton,
    or Kaspersky, nor use free programs like Avira, Avast, or AVG. The
    “best antivirus” for most people to buy, it turns out, is nothing. Why
    we don’t recommend a traditional antivirus suite

    It's insufficient for a security app to just protect against a single
    set of known “viruses.” There is a potentially infinite number of
    malware variations that have been crypted—encoded to look like
    regular, trusted programs—and that deliver their system-breaking goods
    once opened. Although antivirus firms constantly update their
    detection systems to outwit crypting services, they’ll never be able
    to keep up with malware makers intent on getting through.Windows
    Defender, Microsoft’s built-in tool, is good enough for most people.

    Performance: Antivirus software is notorious for slowing down
    computers, blocking the best security features of other apps (such as
    in the Firefox and Chrome browsers), popping up with distracting
    reminders and upsells for subscriptions or updates, and installing
    potentially insecure add-ons such as browser extensions without
    clearly asking you for permission.

    For these reasons, we don’t recommend that most people spend the time
    or the money to add traditional antivirus software to their personal
    computer.
    ========
    In my opinion based on a few years usage, the following is easier,
    cheaper and a lot less trouble than any AV or Security Suite - and
    MORE effective.

    http://www.toolwiz.com/lead/toolwiz_time_freeze/

    A simple as heck freebie sandbox. Time Freeze is simpler than the
    freebie Sandboxie or any other.

    Click to turn it on, and any malware that somehow enters your machine
    is gone bye-bye on reboot. It's also great for installing new
    programs you'd like to check out. When you reboot, they're gone.

    If you want to install them for real, you can reboot Windows with Time
    Freeze off and install the program again for real.

    Just be damn sure to check anything downloaded outside the sandbox
    with VirusTotal's 70+ virus checks first.

    https://www.virustotal.com/#/home/upload

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