5 ms·

As far as I know I have never been infected and I've been running Windows without antivirus for the last five years.

• nitrogen 16y ago
  Be careful with "as far as I know" -- since you haven't been running any virus detection software, you could well be infected. Of course, the risk of undetected infection for technically advanced users doesn't go down when antivirus software is installed, as advanced users know how to avoid the common or visible viruses.
  • narag 16y ago
    ...since you haven't been running any virus detection software, you could well be infected Most virus nowadays are intended to do something over the net. If there aren't connections attempts, no CPU activity, no disk access, one could think that the machine doesn't host a spambot.
  • houseabsolute 16y ago
    Right. Well, the other thing is I have seen no evidence of it outside of my computer. It seems like if I was infected with anything significantly dangerous I'd have had my identity stolen by now. Of course, it could happen tomorrow, but it doesn't seem likely.
    • nitrogen 16y ago
      I don't disagree with you, and for what it's worth, I don't run antivirus software either unless I notice suspicious disk or network activity. Since I don't run untrusted binaries, use Adblock, Flashblock, and Firefox, keep my computer up to date, and avoid visiting unknown or potentially-risky web sites, I never have any problems. My point was that antivirus "believers" may not believe you.
• Tichy 16y ago
  I've never been infected, running Windows for years. I also checked with a bootable Virus scanner CD from time to time. I haven't used virus scanner ever since one of them deleted my whole email inbox. Most of the time, they do more harm than good. They could also have security holes of their own, opening new attack vectors for their attackers.