4 ms·

Thanks, I skimmed through it all (took me 5mins) and nice work! Some of the links and guides you’re referring to are indeed very helpful. The thing that surpri

by wadkar 9y ago

Thanks, I skimmed through it all (took me 5mins) and nice work! Some of the links and guides you’re referring to are indeed very helpful. The thing that surprised me the most, however, was your recommendation for antivirus bitdefender. I think that’s not going to really help the average Joe but only give a false sense of security. Moreover, if I am concerned about privacy I wouldn’t want to install an all seeing software that is closed source and provides no control over what is shared with the parent company (which is russian?) I can’t seem to find more links to the antivirus related argument (on mobile here) but in general folks on HN tend to strongly advise against using one.

bradknowles 9y ago
In my experience, most anti-virus software is very poorly written. They don’t practice safe coding methods themselves. Moreover, even if it was well-written, because of the nature of what you’re asking the software to do, it will have full and complete access to everything on your system, and usually with significant privileges. So, that would make it a very juicy target for malware writers, if nothing else. For non-savvy computer users, Bitdefender is the only anti-virus software I would trust, but for more savvy computer users, even Bitdefender might be more of a risk than it is worth. So, are you computer savvy enough that you know the risks presented by even the best anti-virus software, and would be better off without it? If you are, then maybe you’re not part of the target audience for this page.