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Comment by bni | Hacker News Reader

Exactly, the same points made in this article applies to Windows aswell. Maybe Windows AV will be a few points better, but who cares? It gives users an equally dangerous false sense of security.

Yet, lots of people (both techs and non-techs) will think you are crazy if you dont use AV on your Windows PC. Its some sort of mass psycosis.

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I think you unfairly characterize a lot of Windows AV. Yeah, they're not perfect - if you're browsing dodgy sites, downloading tons of cracks, and clicking on every link, there's no application on Earth that can stop you from getting infected.

However, an AV is pretty good at detecting stuff that you may get exposed to otherwise - exploits can pwn your Windows computer without you even knowing, and sometimes even run off legit ad networks. NoScript / AdBlock, running Google Chrome, and practicing safe browsing can help, but an AV is a good additional layer.

I guess my point is - an AV is NOT a panacea, but it should be used as an additional layer of defence.

Yeah, I never understood the purpose of anti-virus software. If you have a vulnerability that would allow a virus to make its way onto the machine enough for a virus scanner to find the virus, someone will use that same vulnerability to access your system in a way that a virus scanner will not protect you.

I should stop using my web browser and email client, and any other downloaded software that didn't come on my OS install disc?

I guess in a perfect world. Obviously that is not going to happen though.

Anti-virus software is like having airport security that only screens those that fit a certain profile. Someone not meeting that profile is going to walk onto a plane with the intent to do harm, at which point you are no further ahead than you were when you had no security checks at all.

I think you haven't kept up with recent developments in AV software. These days, they continue to monitor all those passengers even after they've gotten on the plane. And remember, there are a lot of different planes -- each of our individual machines -- and the AV software has also improved in its ability to see something bad on one of the planes and quickly notify the rest of us.

I realize AV software applies heuristics to identify some attacks, but in the absence of intent, it is impossible to do it effectively. One man's botnet is another man's legitimate computing cluster.

Unless you warn about everything going on in the system, you are not really aware of everything. If you do warn about everything, the user will start to ignore the warnings.

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