Now before I really get into it I want to make it clear that Antivirus, Anti-Malware, and Internet Security programs are very important and serve a purpose whether we use them or not. They're there for all around protection for your system and important files, and that will always be important, especially to people who work on computers and workstations for a living, and if your field of work lies somewhere in the realm of working on a computer a few hours a day, antivirus and internet security should be a priority.
However, for us enthusiasts who use our computers for gaming and know our internal file system and operating systems in and out, is it even necessary?
Like I said, none of my computers have active antivirus running on them, and I have Windows Defender and Windows Update disabled on all of my PCs. At any time something weird's going on with my computer, like a random program popped up in my taskbar and won't close out, it's time to go to good ol' Task Manager, find the exe, kill the process and delete the exe. Simple as that.
Of course sometimes that's not enough, and that's where Hitman Pro comes into play. This crazy program can kill off the virus if you're not able to do it yourself no problem, and has a nice feature where it can scan an unknown file through its cloud system across five different antivirus databases to find out whether its safe or not. Pretty dank.
Then there's the sort-of rare experiences where you get the chain of viruses on your PC, where a single virus or malware will start putting other viruses on your computer. Again, Hitman Pro or something like Malwarebytes works perfectly in these type of situations.
And, well to be honest, that's pretty much it. There's very few system-killing viruses anymore to the point where the chance of you coming across them is pretty much nil, and as long as you have a good idea of what your filesystem generally looks like you should be able to spot something fishy pretty quickly.
With the popularity of Adblockers in the past few years using those while browsing the web will keep a large amount of popup ads off your computer that viruses generally come from. If you need to access a certain site and are unfamiliar with whether it's safe or not, you can use the site webutation.net to find out whether it's safe or not. Also, surprisingly, the new Windows 8 and 10 version of Windows Defender works a lot better than the Windows 7 version and can actually detect viruses on your computer, and that comes default with every Windows install.
So do we need antivirus anymore? Well, not really, as the tools to combat viruses have significantly increased in the past few years to the point where they're pretty much integrated already whether you realized it or not. Again, I must stress, if you have important data on your PC or use a PC for work, antivirus and internet security should be a must have, and there exist many free antivirus and internet security programs out there for you. Comodo Internet Security (Firewall + Antivirus) and AVG Antivirus are both completely free and can serve you well in your battles.
Now for the enthusiasts who would rather not have antivirus eating up RAM in the background, here's some tips and tricks on how to combat these bastards.
1. Viruses almost always hide in temp folders. Both your Windows/Temp and your Local Temp folders are favorable places for viruses to hide. An easy solution is to clear them out every once in a while, or use a program like CCleaner to do that for you.
2. If you can't close an intrusive program, use task manager. Open it up, go to the processes tab, and find it in the list and close it there. If you've never seen it before and want it removed from your PC, before you remove it, right click it in the list and open the file location, then kill the process in task manager and just delete the exe.
3. Keep a backup program. Whether it's Hitman Pro, MalwareBytes Anti-Malware, or something else of your choosing, keeping a backup on your PC is something everyone should do. It doesn't have to be a full-fledged antivirus program, but something light that you can run whenever to quickly scan your PC and remove that garbage is a generally good idea.
And that'll pretty much cover most problems nowadays! We made it guys, you pretty much never have to worry about 'em anymore. (for the most part)
With the popularity of Adblockers in the past few years using those while browsing the web will keep a large amount of popup ads off your computer that viruses generally come from. If you need to access a certain site and are unfamiliar with whether it's safe or not, you can use the site webutation.net to find out whether it's safe or not. Also, surprisingly, the new Windows 8 and 10 version of Windows Defender works a lot better than the Windows 7 version and can actually detect viruses on your computer, and that comes default with every Windows install.
So do we need antivirus anymore? Well, not really, as the tools to combat viruses have significantly increased in the past few years to the point where they're pretty much integrated already whether you realized it or not. Again, I must stress, if you have important data on your PC or use a PC for work, antivirus and internet security should be a must have, and there exist many free antivirus and internet security programs out there for you. Comodo Internet Security (Firewall + Antivirus) and AVG Antivirus are both completely free and can serve you well in your battles.
Now for the enthusiasts who would rather not have antivirus eating up RAM in the background, here's some tips and tricks on how to combat these bastards.
1. Viruses almost always hide in temp folders. Both your Windows/Temp and your Local Temp folders are favorable places for viruses to hide. An easy solution is to clear them out every once in a while, or use a program like CCleaner to do that for you.
2. If you can't close an intrusive program, use task manager. Open it up, go to the processes tab, and find it in the list and close it there. If you've never seen it before and want it removed from your PC, before you remove it, right click it in the list and open the file location, then kill the process in task manager and just delete the exe.
3. Keep a backup program. Whether it's Hitman Pro, MalwareBytes Anti-Malware, or something else of your choosing, keeping a backup on your PC is something everyone should do. It doesn't have to be a full-fledged antivirus program, but something light that you can run whenever to quickly scan your PC and remove that garbage is a generally good idea.
And that'll pretty much cover most problems nowadays! We made it guys, you pretty much never have to worry about 'em anymore. (for the most part)
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