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Comment by web3-is-a-scam | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, there is no such thing as “anti-virus” software. The software itself usually does much more damage to my PC than any malware ever has.

Then again, I don’t keep anything valuable on my internet connected computers - and if I’m suspicious of even a little thing I just wipe the PC and restore from image.

Haven’t run any antivirus software in over a decade and haven’t had a single problem.

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There was a time and a place for antivirus (drop a train on them, Edgar!) but by the time Microsoft defender came about it was mostly over.

Now even anti malware isn’t necessary as much.

And I like the reverse philosophy behind defender. As it is "embedded" it's not supposed to say anything until it's relevant. It is really hidden.

For any other AV, they have to show frequently that they are here and help you justify your investment, so you have pop-up, reports and annoying notifications.

Yeah, until no matter how many ways you tell it, it keeps flagging legitimate security tools as malware because they sometimes get used by it, and you have to deal with getting "we have quarantined this software" popups every day or so...

Except that with Defender, the whole Windows Explorer UI hangs for several seconds when you do anything related to an unknown file while it scans it and sends the file to Microsoft (and if you turn it off, it turns itself back on in a few hours).

I turned that off with ShutUp10++ and it stays off.

I believe you can do the same thing manually with a registry or group policy edit.

Long time ago I had to rebuild a cousins computer because it was crashing from all the malware.

After I finished cleaning it, I plugged it into the cable modem within seconds the computer was having pop-up ads, and every kind of malware you could imagine.

So rebuilt it once again, then installed antivirus from a disk before hooking it up to the internet. It was actually functional.

In my experience, there are some security products out there that protect against browser redirects and software that can do shady things to the computer even though it appears legit. I think these products are good for basic users who don't know how to protect themselves online. IMHO Defender is only good for on disk problems.

Which OS do you use ?

Either

a. not Windows (which is offtopic given Avast targeted Windows with lip service for MacOS/Linux/Docker) [0]

b. or Windows (in which case they DID run antivirus via Windows Defender)

[0] https://businesshelp.avast.com/Content/Products/SysReqs/SysR...

Windows on a gaming PC, Mac for Work and Ubuntu for the daily driver. I’m going to be replacing the Windows PC with steam deck once I scrounge the cash for it.

Did you turn off Windows Defender? That's the built-in antivirus.

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