Worried about Viruses?
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Are you worried about Viruses?
Not to denegrate their impact of viruses, but their bark is more often worse than their bite.
If you read IT press releases about the latest Virus like I do, which warn of the latest and greatest Virus coming down the pipe threatening catastrophic results for all, make a quick note on who's writing them. If its via a Anti-Virus software manufacturer take it all with a grain of salt. It is in the interest of Anti-Virus software producers like Symantec to keep you alarmed and afraid, so you'll buy their software and renew your subscriptions.
The Bottomline: Yes, Viruses and their brethren Spyware, Trojan Horses, Worms, Bots and Rootkits are a problem, but lets not go overboard.
If you take simple precautions by using a secure and standards compliant browser like Firefox or Opera (which have additional security built in) and don't open suspicious emails and download their contents you should be fine.
For extra security a freeware ant-virus product from Panda Cloud or Avast Home Addition or AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition will do fine. Personally, I do not recommend Symantec's Norton. It, like a lot of other commercial Anti-virus software runs in the background with a large footprint, effectively slowing down your PC all day, every day - making the impact of the anti-virus software cumulatively greater than the risk of impact from a virus.
As for us, we've recently switched to Panda Cloud and not had any problems - we've hardly known its there.
Reviews of each of these products by PC World are listed below:
Avast Home Edition review by PCWorld
AVG Anti-virus review by PCWorld
Norton Internet Security review by PCWorld
Update: Microsoft has just launched its own anti-virus product for Windows, for free. Its a game-changer for the world's corporate anti-virus providers. Its so new I haven't seen any reviews of it yet, but you can download it here to try.
- Prepare in advance, use a secure web browser, stay away from dodgy emails and have an anti-virus software in place.
- Free anti-virus software programs provide solid alternative to commercial products.