Are AV and FW still necessary?

I used to be CRAZY with AV and FW, I used to scan my computer everyday with 5+ top notch scanners set at maximum sensitivity and monitored my start-up programs like a hawk.

Since using Vista, I've had 1 occurrence of a virus, and I did not even use an AV to get rid of it, just CCleaner and some other small program.
And I am pretty sure I haven't needed a firewall to block any incoming or outgoing (which would require a virus) connections.

So for consumers that don't have financial/business data on their computers, is it really still necessary and worth the loss of ram and processing power, battery life, and hassles (AV and FW blocking some things you don't want blocked)?

My common sense tells me that it's not

 

There's a rather small group on this forum that don't. If you have above average technical knowledge it isn't necessary, but most people still have them.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sec...-use-windows-without-anti-virus-security.html

 

Your common sense is not always right.

 

The amount of resources that are used are minimal. Windows Firewall and Defender are very light weight and do a sufficient job for majority of users.

 

For consumers, AV/FW is mostly meant to protect you from your own stupidity. That way when bob clicks on funnypicture.jpg.exe, he doesn't have to waste a tech's time assisting the guy to clean his computer up. They are also meant to protect against generic mass target attacks, like browser vulns and email worms. It's generally good to run something like MSE to prevent this from happening; it just saves potential headaches and time.

If you are specifically targetted by a hacker for whatever reason (hint: they have better things to do than snoop your computer, so this is very unlikely) then an AV/FW will not stop them, just slow them down.

 

These AV vs no AV threads are becoming popular. I wonder when search indexing, pagefile and superfetch will be in vogue again?

Here is a simple test.

If you saw this as a link in an email, on a website or in your im window, would you click on it?

If yes, just stick with AV and be happy. If you answered no, then congrats! and go have yourself some cookies.

 

I think AV is necessary. I have had to clean my brother and roommates pc's after they both got malware. Even though I know how to use computers better than both of them (especially my brother who downloads planes from random websites for Flight Sim X), I don't feel comfortable without one, unless I am in Linux.

As for the firewall, I'll stick with the one built into Windows.

 

If you set your machine up with great care and get everything right, you'll probably not have a problem without anti-virus software, but as others have said, it doesn't have much of an overhead so why not use it.

 

I personally don't use AV.

Sure, I have Malwarebytes and use it to scan my computer once in a while but it's not really necessary and it only does on-demand scans.

A lot of it does come from common sense (or tech sense as I would call it). If you know the common tricks and pitfalls, you can avoid it.

 

I'd say yes - BUT not on a paranoia level as you seemed to have.

Even if you do online banking - unless your bank is run by a bunch of IT incompetents you should have a card reader that generates a fresh code every time you log on - that leaves shopping sites - and heck, there amazon has a nice safety feature change your address = retype card number

The other point: if you use an AV product on the "default" settings it does not need a lot of RAM and not a lot of CPU power either.

 

What if my cookies are infected?

 

I dont think I need a virus scanner. I have not had any warnings that anything has been detected for years. Even in XP I dont remember any problems. However I keep it running anyway.

I share my external hard disk and usb sticks with colleagues and friends. So there is always a chance that something can get infected. If I did not have an up to date virus and malware scanner I would be more worried and spend time checking the drives I get from others for suspicious files. Same goes for zip/rar email attachments.

Virus scanner uses almost no resources compared to other software. So just keep it and you have ease of mind.