Debate: Are Antivirus Software Necessary? (And Ways You Can Protect Yourself Without Them)

AV_Necessary The everyday computer user will probably have some sort of Antivirus program installed on their computer. Although there are many pro’s to using antivirus software, and there are even more con’s. But do you really need to have an Antivirus Program at all? I’d say not, but many other people will say yes.

One of the main factors that many users, (including myself) don’t use Antivirus protection, or have it active, is due to the decrease in speed and performance. If you install Norton, AVG, Avast McAfee, Kaspersky, Nod32, Sophos, Windows Security Essentials, and all those other programs, you may notice that the performance of your computer will dramatically decrease. This is mainly due to the fact that everything you do, everything you download, is scanned by the anti virus software. This may annoy most of us as we like to have our computer running fast and smoothly. But the question, is having Antivirus Software installed really necessary?

I am on the net (or on the computer) for about 10 hours a day (yeah I know it’s a lot), regularly surfing the internet, playing games, reading my many emails, and I don’t have any Antivirus software installed, and never had a virus. I say “you do not need to have Antivirus software installed, you simply need to protect yourself from the start and be cautious of what you do.”

 

Advantage: Increase Your Computer Speed

As I have said, AV software is the main cause on slowing your computer down to a snails pace. To increase your system speed, it is a simple as disabling your AV software or uninstall it. You will then notice a huge increase on performance on sending and receiving emails, browsing a website, and opening applications. But since we are disabling and not protecting your computer any more, you may think, this is stupid. I say it’s not.

Advantage: Increase Boot Time and Performance

You may notice that the more and more software you install, the slower your computer gets, especially at start-up. This is because most programs are programmed to start when your computer starts. So with all this unnecessary software that is running at start-up, you can disable using MSConfig. There are many tutorials on the internet that can show you how you can increase performance by disabling start-up programs.

 

Tip: What Web browser are you using?

If you are using Internet Explorer, I’d suggest changing browsers. Of all the people I see using IE as there default browsers, they always seem to be having problems with virus or a slow computer. I’d suggest switching to Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome as they provide much better protection. Since Google crawls the web, if you go to a site that they have flagged as Malicious, they will give you a warning first and a chance to leave before any harm is done. By using a browser like this, it helps you stay protected from a much higher level.

Tip: Use Firefox Addons

Webmasters on malicious websites also tend to hide code in there pages that can harm your computer. I suggest using NoScript as this prevents any code such as JavaScript from automatically running. I admit, this had saved me a few times, and have not noticed a decrease in speed.

Tip: Scan What Is Running

A very useful lightweight tool that I have found very useful is HiJackThis. It is very easy to use, and can it scans all your running processes and outputs a text file. Simple visit HijackThis.de, upload or paste the .txt file in to the form and it will check for any nasty files.

 

The Other Side

Suppose as much as it hurts me to discuss this, I suppose I have to anyway. If you download a lot of files off the internet, get all those funny email attachments and don’t really care what you install, open or run on the computer, you then should have some sort of anti virus protection. But I keep wanting to come back to the point that ‘If you watch what you do’ then you will be fine. Also, if you do manage to find you have a virus, you then need to install AV software to remove it. That is the only reason why I think someone should install antivirus software.

The Debate Begins

Now it is up to you to decide. Do you really need to install antivirus software on your computer and what are your reasons for it? Also, if you did manage to find your computer was infected with a virus, what software did you use to remove it?

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