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Could anti-virus programs be creating more problems than they are solving?Well, it depends on a number of factors. There was a time when an anti-virus program's sole mission was to alert you that an infection had come onboard and to offer options for removing it. Such an anti-virus program would run continuously in the background, watching for threats from all directions.Naturally, any program that runs constantly in the background uses system resources and slows down your computer to some extent. In any case, it was not an anti-virus program's job to watch for spyware, identity theft schemes, or spam (unsolicited advertising) or to be an anti-hacker "firewall." Well, spyware (aka adware) is often acquired when you visit different Internet sites. Unlike a virus, spyware usually does not immediately begin doing bad things to your computer, and can be easily be found and removed by doing a daily scan with a program like Ad-Aware, which is free from Lavasoft.com. Windows Defender is another free anti-spyware program, available at Microsoft.com/downloads. Anti-spyware programs do not need to run continuously in the background, thus slowing down your computer more. A daily scan can do the job nicely. As for spam, most email services are doing a pretty good job of filtering it out nowadays. My favorite is Gmail. Get a free account at Google.com. You can even have Gmail forward messages to your Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail inboxes. Click on Gmail "Settings" and look for the "Forward My Mail To:" option. As for a firewall, Windows comes with one built-in — and if your computer is connected to a router that sits between the PC and your Internet modem, you have a mechanical firewall as well. If you add a yet another firewall, that comes with an "Internet Security Suite," you slow down your computer even more and run the risk of unnecessarily blocking access to a variety of websites. As for identity theft "phishing" schemes, it seems like new ones arrive every day, and some are pretty clever. Still, I don't need an overweight, ponderous program that slows my PC to a crawl to tell that the Nigerian widow, whose late husband left her billions of dollars she wants to share with me for helping her establish a local bank account is probaly a scam. Likewise, I know that emails allegedly from PayPal or eBay or "my bank" telling me I have to give them all my personal information again because someone is "trying to illegally access my acount " is obviously a phishing scam. (It's the sender who is trying to break into my account.)
Right-click it again and choose Enable, or a similar command, to start the program running in the background again. Or...restarting the computer normally returns the security program to running in the background again. |
So where does this leave us?Well, creators of the previously anti-virus-only applications decided that they should go ahead and pack anti-spy, anti-spam, anti-identity-theft capabilities, and a firewall into what they now call "Internet Security" programs.The end result is a huge program that dramatically slows down your computer because it is constantly examining and challenging everything you do.
So what programs do I recommend?Well, for years I used the free anti-virus program AVG, but cancelled it when Version 8.0 came out with most of the cumbersome bells and whistles mentioned above. I had previously cancelled Norton Anti-virus (for the same reasons) when it became Norton Internet Security.However, you can find links for two excellent free anti-virus programs (Avast and Avira) here: Don's Free Programs Page. Keep in mind, though, that you should never have more than one anti-virus program installed on your computer at any given time. Multiple anti-virus programs confuse each other and can become worthless at detecting infections. As for which anti-virus program I use — well, basically, none.However, I don't recommend this to others. My recommendation is that every Windows user has one reputable anti-viruse program onboard and running full time.So why don't I take my own advice?Well, my attitude has always been that the best defense against viruses is to not do things that expose you to them in the first place.
© - Donald Ray Edrington - All Rights Reserved |
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