Virus Attack

[dekkarax]

ironic, UAC is also the name of the bad corporation that accidentally opens a portal to hell in Doom.

 

[Guttural Engagement]

ironic, UAC is also the name of the bad corporation that accidentally opens a portal to hell in Doom.

lol, I totally never thought of that. Nice.

I've never used it either, it's just the one that seems to be advertised the most...or at least the one that has caught my eye in this regard. I really don't know why people actually pay for virus scanners, I too use AVG free with an odd scan here and there with malwarebytes just to be sure, and I have no problems.

Yeah, AVG has always done the job for me. BTW, love your music.

 

[jpoon]

Screw UAC, that crap drives me insane. Avast5, SUPERAntiSpyware and a decent firewall and I'm good to go!

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

ironic, UAC is also the name of the bad corporation that accidentally opens a portal to hell in Doom.

lol, I totally never thought of that. Nice.

I've never used it either, it's just the one that seems to be advertised the most...or at least the one that has caught my eye in this regard. I really don't know why people actually pay for virus scanners, I too use AVG free with an odd scan here and there with malwarebytes just to be sure, and I have no problems.

Yeah, AVG has always done the job for me. BTW, love your music.

Wow! "Love", that's bold...
...pun...sorry. Thanks though, that's very cool of you.

 

[Zacharine]

I think it's actually quite hard to get a virus unless you're doing something a little iffy.

I actually remember reading a study about this some time ago. The conclusion of that study was that if you disable your firewalls and AV programs and simply plug the computer net cable in without even actively using any programs that require internet, the chances of getting within 20 minutes infected with a virus, trojan or malware was around 50%.

This was done on the WinXP(SP3) OS though, so not sure how it would translate to computer running... say a Linux or Win7. And it specifically was connected pretty much straight up to a public ISP router so that there would be as few protected private routers, servers, intra-net firewalls etc in between.

Was the article immediately followed by an advert for Norton?

lol

No, it was a serious study from an IT department in a uni at my country.

 

[D.L.390]

I recommend if you use Vista, NOT to disalbe UAC however annoying it may be UNLESS you FUCKING KNOW YOUR SHIT. I know my shit, and I thought I'd be safe without UAC; my anti virus was up to date, I had a firewall, AND I'm behind a router.
.

Well then, "FUCKING KNOW MY SHIT" i suppose.

I run with superuser privileges, uac off, no antivirus of any kind and no soft firewall.

Haven't gotten a virus in years.

Same. It just depends whether or not you download heaps of freeware and rubbish. And if you do that, you'll get viruses, UAC/Antivirus or not.

 

[likalaruku]

I have Avast & Threatfire running. I haven't gotten a virus in 3 or 4 years.

 

[Majere613]

There's quite a few lucky people on this thread.
Contrary to the beliefs expressed here, you don't need to download anything obviously dodgy or open an attachment to get infected these days. Any semi-amateur website is a potential risk- I've personally had, or narrowly blocked, infections from DeviantArt, Aint It Cool News, Bell of Lost Souls, One Piece of Bleach and several others. With the arguable exception of OPOB, none of those is a remotely 'dodgy' site.
UAC, especially in Windows 7, _does_ help. For example, one common attack vector is for a site to suddenly be hijacked into running what looks like the installer for Acrobat. UAC gives you a chance to prevent that install- and unless you were trying to install Acrobat, it's an easy catch.
Personally, I recommend upgrading to 7, and always running the very latest version of your browser. I tend to switch between IE8 and Firefox as new vulnerabilities pop up. I also run a dual-drive system and keep everything important on the non-system drive. To reiterate, and as thefreeman0001 points out above, the threat can come from just about anywhere- these guys are constantly trying to hijack sites, and their hacks generally stay up for less than an hour, so just because you've never been infected does _not_ mean you've never been to a site that has been.

Seriously, I was complacent like a lot of the above posters once. I learned my lesson.