No anti-virus software? No Internet connection | Hacker News Reader

No anti-virus software? No Internet connection

news.com.au

16 pointspufuwozu24 comments

Anti-virus software is not going to fix the problem when the users are the problem, mandating it will just annoy more advanced users who find anti-virus slow and unnecessary. Australia really needs to back off their internet regulation ideas, they're terrible.

Yes, that is a poor idea (and Australia has been full of those for years now) but the concept of restricting access if your PC is compromised isn't awful and would have to be worth discussing further.

It's probably good for the AV-software manufacturers though.

Its another good example of the Australian governments patronising attitude towards their citizens/inmates.

Workarounds will be easy to find and the market for "antivirus shells", programs that pretend to be antiviruses, will actually help spread viruses.

there are already some universities in the states and canada that require its users to have anti-virus software installed before they can use the campus wireless network. i'm not sure how they handle mac users.

At the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Macs get on the network without any checking. So if you spoof your useragent you can bypass the check.

If someone knows how to spoof a useragent, they probably don't need virus protection anyways.

Yes but the underlying problem here is the your non-technical person on a Mac does need some sort of education or anti-virus. It's further building onto the illusions that Mac OS is invulnerable to viruses and spyware.

your non-technical person on a Mac does need some sort of education or anti-virus

Education yes, antivirus no. There are roughly zero active Mac viruses; the real threat is phishing.

Implementing it in the fall at Villanova http://www.villanovan.com/software-to-monitor-network-1.1342...

Worked as a residential network coordinator at the University of New Brunswick. I can confirm this to be accurate. I can also confirm that it does not help things ONE bit.

I've lived in housing for 3 separate Universities in the states.

At all of them, Linux machines were allowed to connect to the network without any fuss, and presumably Macs too. Windows machines were required to install university-provided anti-virus.

There was one little problem where the detection software they were using was checking for SMB support, and I got blocked because my Linux box had something running like that, but I called support and they worked it out.

Carnegie Mellon does the same thing.

If I really want/have to I can relatively easy change university. However, changing country is not that simple.

Every large corporation I've worked for had similar rules and regulations and I left each and every one of them because of it.

As far as I know I have never been infected and I've been running Windows without antivirus for the last five years.

Be careful with "as far as I know" -- since you haven't been running any virus detection software, you could well be infected. Of course, the risk of undetected infection for technically advanced users doesn't go down when antivirus software is installed, as advanced users know how to avoid the common or visible viruses.

...since you haven't been running any virus detection software, you could well be infected

Most virus nowadays are intended to do something over the net. If there aren't connections attempts, no CPU activity, no disk access, one could think that the machine doesn't host a spambot.

Right. Well, the other thing is I have seen no evidence of it outside of my computer. It seems like if I was infected with anything significantly dangerous I'd have had my identity stolen by now. Of course, it could happen tomorrow, but it doesn't seem likely.

I don't disagree with you, and for what it's worth, I don't run antivirus software either unless I notice suspicious disk or network activity. Since I don't run untrusted binaries, use Adblock, Flashblock, and Firefox, keep my computer up to date, and avoid visiting unknown or potentially-risky web sites, I never have any problems. My point was that antivirus "believers" may not believe you.

I've never been infected, running Windows for years. I also checked with a bootable Virus scanner CD from time to time.

I haven't used virus scanner ever since one of them deleted my whole email inbox. Most of the time, they do more harm than good. They could also have security holes of their own, opening new attack vectors for their attackers.

So, if I have a toaster with internet connection I'll have to install an anti-virus on it? http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/in-Action/

Is it just me or has the Australian govt gone a bit nuts with respect to the Internet in the last year or so? Every other week it seems I see a new story like this.

Very much so. Glad to be heading back home (from Australia) in 2 weeks.

Porn is a very serious issue out here. In addition, I cannot stand paying for bandwith (switching from "unlimited" internet to pay for what you use has been an issue).

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