4 ms·

This has been my consistent experience with McAfee in particular. I worked for 4 years in low level tech support, fixing computers for people that were sold in

This has been my consistent experience with McAfee in particular. I worked for 4 years in low level tech support, fixing computers for people that were sold in retail. We were required to recommend Anti-Virus software to our customers, and the whole store consistently recommended Webroot (which we sold) not because it was particularly good, but because it was the only option we had that didn't slow the machine to a crawl. Replacing McAfee with almost anything else on the market felt like it doubled the machine's speed. I personally haven't run antivirus software for years on my own machines. I recommended that all of my customers learn basic security practice instead, and reminded them that the antivirus program they used is there as a tool to help them, and not a replacement for safe browsing.

PaulHoule 10y ago
To be fair, kaspersky is better than the others. It screws up hour machine much less than most av programs.
eitland 10y ago
Mine too. Mother-in-law called because she could connect to Internet. Turned out McAfee was just demanding their protection fee. So: McAfee bad. Cannot speak for Kaspersky, haven't used it for years. Defender is OKish. But one that I sometimes recommend is Vipre from Sunbelt Software. My builds are slightly faster with it and on one occasion it took down an infection that no other AV I tried managed. (Of course this can just be because the malware writers didn't care to code in resistance to it but then again it supports Kasperskys claim that diversity is good.)
vlan0 10y ago
Do I sense a possible previous GS Agent? If not, I do remember those days well. Clients would constantly come into the store because the trial version of Norton/McAfee etc completely broke the machine's network stack.
- zeta0134 10y ago
  Once an agent, always an agent. :)
laumars 10y ago
I often hear people promoting common sense over antivirus solutions and while I do agree that some degree of common sense is required, there are still a lot of attacks that can bypass safe browsing. In the past we've seen malware injected into ads that then load on legitimate sites. Hosts get hacked too and their sites can then be used to serve malware. You're right to teach your customers safe browsing habits but they do still need an antivirus as well. Disclaimer: antivirus solutions are not perfect either. Particularly with new attacks. So while I do advocate using them it's also good not to take them for granted (e.g. assuming you can get away with running any old binary you've downloaded from Limewire because you have an AV installed). The best approach is common sense with the AV as a safety net.
- douche 10y ago
  > In the past we've seen malware injected into ads that then load on legitimate sites Just another reason to use an adblocker.
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  A major part of safe browsing (and safe computer usage in general) is an ad-blocker that defaults to requiring you to whitelist the content you want to let through.
  - cryptarch 10y ago
    Have you found a workable way of doing that? I manually whitelist in uMatrix, but it's pretty inconvenient and does not stop attacks coming from domains previously whitelisted/deemed safe.
    - GrinningFool 10y ago
      uMatrix is the best I have. I've accepted the inconvenience as minor in comparison; but previous whitelisting is a problem that I actually hadn't considered. I can't think of any reasonable way to prevent that - even catching changed/new scripts and requiring approval to run them won't help if all you can see are minimized scripts.

PaulHoule 10y ago

To be fair, kaspersky is better than the others. It screws up hour machine much less than most av programs.

eitland 10y ago

Mine too. Mother-in-law called because she could connect to Internet. Turned out McAfee was just demanding their protection fee. So: McAfee bad. Cannot speak for Kaspersky, haven't used it for years. Defender is OKish. But one that I sometimes recommend is Vipre from Sunbelt Software. My builds are slightly faster with it and on one occasion it took down an infection that no other AV I tried managed. (Of course this can just be because the malware writers didn't care to code in resistance to it but then again it supports Kasperskys claim that diversity is good.)

vlan0 10y ago

Do I sense a possible previous GS Agent? If not, I do remember those days well. Clients would constantly come into the store because the trial version of Norton/McAfee etc completely broke the machine's network stack.

zeta0134 10y ago
Once an agent, always an agent. :)

laumars 10y ago

I often hear people promoting common sense over antivirus solutions and while I do agree that some degree of common sense is required, there are still a lot of attacks that can bypass safe browsing. In the past we've seen malware injected into ads that then load on legitimate sites. Hosts get hacked too and their sites can then be used to serve malware. You're right to teach your customers safe browsing habits but they do still need an antivirus as well. Disclaimer: antivirus solutions are not perfect either. Particularly with new attacks. So while I do advocate using them it's also good not to take them for granted (e.g. assuming you can get away with running any old binary you've downloaded from Limewire because you have an AV installed). The best approach is common sense with the AV as a safety net.

douche 10y ago
> In the past we've seen malware injected into ads that then load on legitimate sites Just another reason to use an adblocker.
GrinningFool 10y ago
A major part of safe browsing (and safe computer usage in general) is an ad-blocker that defaults to requiring you to whitelist the content you want to let through.
- cryptarch 10y ago
  Have you found a workable way of doing that? I manually whitelist in uMatrix, but it's pretty inconvenient and does not stop attacks coming from domains previously whitelisted/deemed safe.
  - GrinningFool 10y ago
    uMatrix is the best I have. I've accepted the inconvenience as minor in comparison; but previous whitelisting is a problem that I actually hadn't considered. I can't think of any reasonable way to prevent that - even catching changed/new scripts and requiring approval to run them won't help if all you can see are minimized scripts.