As many of you know, Viruses on Windows based computers can be a real pain. Let’s be entirely honest here and clear up a few generalizations and rumors about viruses…
Myth 1: Macs don’t have viruses.
While it’s far less frequent, Macs have plenty of Malware and Viruses out there that can drastically decrease the security of your data. But FARRRR less exist when compared to Windows. They make antivirus applications for Macintosh and there are definition files of Mac exclusive and shared viruses that effect it. Linux/Unix are no exception to this rule either. Let me explain to you why there is a difference though.
If you look at the statistics on how many people use which operating system type, it become very obvious that the WORLD is full of Windows users. Advertising can tell you that there are a lot of Mac users, but when compared it is nowhere close. The average person uses Windows and people who design Viruses and Malware target as many people as possible, in doing so, design their software to effect Windows users. It’s unfortunate, but that is the truth. Apple loves to tell people that they are somehow immune to any types of attacks and tout their own horns quite often, publicly, stating just that. They pretend that their software has something to do with it which is bogus and they are not nearly as perfect as they would like to say they are. If everyone used Macs, they would get more Viruses.
Myth 2: Macs are more secure.
What they also don’t tell you is this: Networking is Networking.
There is nothing about a Macintosh computer that makes their Networking components more secure than a Windows PC. They go online, people can connect to them on many of the same ports through the same networks through the same means as any other machine. The software on them is only a small part of that. In order to access web pages and emails you must connect to the web and email servers on a certain port. Connecting opens you up to possibilities for attack or at the very least, theft of your data. When your computer, regardless of which type it is, transmits data, people connected to your network can capture it and steal that information. Network security comes first, PC/Mac security comes second.
Myth 3: Paying for Anti-virus software keeps your data safe.
While that CAN be true to some extent, the most common way that your computer becomes infected, data becomes stolen, or something gets installed on your computer without your consent is through your Web Browser. It may be shocking to some of you, but still, and by a large margin, Internet Explorer is the most used Web Browser. Since it comes with nearly every PC sold, people just use it by default, not because it is in any way a superior product. It does a TERRIBLE job of displaying websites compared to any modern Web Browser. In my opinion, it’s by far the worst.
Internet Explorer, regardless of which version, is attached to your computer and putting your computer at risk! Whenever something effects it, it effects Windows Explorer and often causes any program your PC uses to shut down. A web browser like Mozilla Firefox has it’s own security built right into it, including: virus scan of any downloaded file, popup blockers, website certificate verification, plugin control security, and even an updated list of websites that are potentially harmful to your computer. And if all of that fails and Firefox somehow gets damaged or corrupted, it’s not going to effect the rest of your computer because it is it’s own, separate application.
If you’re still not convinced, it’s FASTER, uses less system resources, more functional, easier to use, imports all of your old Internet Explorer settings for you, has more support for multimedia and advanced websites, and 99.9% of the time, will display a web page correctly where Internet Explorer fails to do so.
Myth 4: Well known antivirus software such as Symantec, McAffee, and Norton are the best.
For one, I’ve never believed that to be true. NEVER. I remember back when I first got started using computers online. It seemed that every school computer I got on with Norton installed was painfully slow and if anyone ever had it installed and wanted to remove it, they had better have lot’s of spare time because it was undoubtedly broken immediately after the install. That’s true with all of the top 3 Anti-Virus companies. Their software consumes more resources than any others, breaks too easily, takes forever to update, and what people aren’t aware of, FAIL at keeping your computer secure. Nowadays computers are much faster, but instead of getting better, this type of software keeps getting worse as they add in more “protection” from malware and ways to predict future threats.
The fact of the matter is this: I’ve used every major antivirus application I could think of and downloaded viruses onto my laptop(Yes, they are easy to find). Out of the 25 different infected files, McAfee, Symantec(yes an up to date SEP client), and Norton did extremely bad. The only antivirus program to prove completely ineffective was ClamWin, but nobody really takes that seriously anyways, and for a reason obviously, it found NOTHING. But each of those top 3 programs found less than 10 of the threats. ALL of them did however prove to be the biggest pain to work with, the most expensive, and the biggest cause of painfully slow computing out there.
Kaspersky found the most viruses actively, all 25, without doing a scan. Avira Antivir took a bit longer to do so, but found 23 of them without a scan, and all 25 when I did a scan. The version of Avira Antivir however was COMPLETELY FREE OF COST. Antivir is incredible and I suggest everyone download and use it immediately.
http://www.free-av.de/en/trialpay_download/1/avira_antivir_personal__free_antivirus.html
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