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Comment by benbristow | Hacker News Reader

Leave Windows Defender/Firewall on as default and stay away from dodgy sites. Simple as that really.

Same.

I only use Windows in a VM now, but for years I ran Windows with no AV outside of whatever Windows set up on it's own. I only got two viruses in my life, and both times I was asking for it (downloading sketchy looking things off of Kazaa when that was a thing).

Sounds simple, and it actually is, and this served me well for the past 20 years or so. I think. Did take me some 'practice' though, i.e. got bitten once only then knew better than to trust random executables. (Now if I really want that I just fire up a VM.) And back then there wasn't even Defender and now I still turn it off usually, sometimes it wrecks performance. On the other hand: for all I know my machines are all infected..

Eset has a nice online scanner (and the best 3rd party AV IMHO): https://www.eset.com/us/home/online-scanner/

Vipre has a nice offline scanner you can download. They used to update it daily, but I haven't used it in awhile since I mostly manage Linux now. https://www.vipreantivirus.com/vipre-rescue-virus-removal-to...

Yep, same. Sometimes I’ll spin up a VM if I’m visiting a site that I’m suspect of or installing something random (even if it’s open source because I didn’t build these binaries and I haven’t audited the code), but as I used to say when I was doing desktop support “you don’t get malware by visiting CNN”.

>"you don't get malware by visiting CNN"

Sometimes you do: https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/malvertising-campaign...

Run an adblocker and up to date Windows 10.

For anyone doing tech support over the Easter long weekend: https://decentsecurity.com/#/holiday-tasks/

Windows 10 is getting a new Sandbox feature so soon you’ll be able to use that instead

> “you don’t get malware by visiting CNN”

I have to barge in here and mention that doing totally reasonable things can result in getting malware installed on your systems.

The most glaring case was the early Windows XP era, when it was enough to plug in the Ethernet cable during installation to get malware. I had to download the service pack and install it offline before plugging in the network.

Today, I'd point out that ad networks' code is barely scrutinized, and they can hit unpatched vulnerabilities all right (sorry for not providing examples).

Be fair to yourself, they're intentionally not easy to track names of, etc.

That's why it's so important to discuss & combat conceptually, not specifically.

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