Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="roger_m" data-source="post: 1014271" data-attributes="member: 31436">Some thoughts on this. I believe that is usually very hard to get infected if you keep Windows and vulnerable software updated and are always careful about what files you open. I base that on years of experience. An important point to make, is that I have never said that doing so will prevent infections, just that it will significantly reduce the likelihood of getting infected. On my own computers, the only times that I&#039;ve got infected is when I&#039;ve manually opened infected files and I&#039;ve never got infected just from browsing the web. I make no effort to only visit known and trusted websites. But on an unpatched work computer, I once got infected just from visiting a compromised website.In my opinion, I think it&#039;s much more important to be careful about what files you open, rather than obsessing about finding the best possible security solution.I would never think that anyone is stupid for having less knowledge than me or for getting infected. I can understand why it&#039;s easy for many users to get infected, as they believe that their antivirus is going to keep them protected. For example, if someone opens an infected email attachment which contains ransomware, they are probably going to blame their antivirus for not protecting them, rather than stopping to think that if they hadn&#039;t open that file they wouldn&#039;t have got infected. Once again, I would never call anyone stupid for that.Every time one my computers has been infected, I&#039;ve discovered the infection. It&#039;s certainly very possible that a PC can infected and it goes undetected by their antivirus. It&#039;s also possible (although less likely) that second opinion scanners will fail to detect the infection too, even if multiple scanners are used. However, surely in time that infection will be detected. I typically go for years between doing clean installs. Surely if I was to get infected, even in the infection was not detected right away, it would get detected eventually.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="roger_m, post: 1014271, member: 31436"] Some thoughts on this. I believe that is usually very hard to get infected if you keep Windows and vulnerable software updated and are always careful about what files you open. I base that on years of experience. An important point to make, is that I have never said that doing so will prevent infections, just that it will significantly reduce the likelihood of getting infected. On my own computers, the only times that I've got infected is when I've manually opened infected files and I've never got infected just from browsing the web. I make no effort to only visit known and trusted websites. But on an unpatched work computer, I once got infected just from visiting a compromised website. In my opinion, I think it's much more important to be careful about what files you open, rather than obsessing about finding the best possible security solution. I would never think that anyone is stupid for having less knowledge than me or for getting infected. I can understand why it's easy for many users to get infected, as they believe that their antivirus is going to keep them protected. For example, if someone opens an infected email attachment which contains ransomware, they are probably going to blame their antivirus for not protecting them, rather than stopping to think that if they hadn't open that file they wouldn't have got infected. Once again, I would never call anyone stupid for that. Every time one my computers has been infected, I've discovered the infection. It's certainly very possible that a PC can infected and it goes undetected by their antivirus. It's also possible (although less likely) that second opinion scanners will fail to detect the infection too, even if multiple scanners are used. However, surely in time that infection will be detected. I typically go for years between doing clean installs. Surely if I was to get infected, even in the infection was not detected right away, it would get detected eventually. [/QUOTE]

Verification