Online Virus Scans

[JPnyc]

That's why it takes so long. It scans everything, even compressed files. You'll also note the file count is MUCH higher than anyt other scan you use

[Moira]

It certainly was! I couldn't believe my PC even had that many files on it - just shows what rubbish you collect when space isn't at a premium. There's stuff on here that was ready for the recycle bin 3 years ago, but because it's stored on large data partitions, it's less effort to keep it than sort through it.

[oofki]

Moria and Jpsync are right it is a good practice to have an active anti-virus engine running on your computer at all times. But I posted the links for people whos a/v doesnt pick up on something or if you have a suspicious file you would like to cross check.

[Moira]

That's right oofki - it's always said to be good practice to have two or three anti spyware programs on your PC as one will find things another will miss. That's somewhat down to whether a particular file is deemed to be spyware or not - a virus ought to be more clear cut - but the point is you can't do the same thing with anti virus software, two programs running at the same time would likely create problems. So it gives a chance for different software to analyse your system, and certainly in the case of the Panda one I tried, is incredibly thorough, more so than the daily scans AVG does.

[dalek]

More then one AV running does cause problems if they are scanning in "real time", I know that Norton and McAfee pretty much don't get along (must be propriety), and we all know how much Norton likes to control the whole OS.

It's okay to have your workhorse AV as the one running in real time and to have an option to scan manually with another version, I have seen far too many HJT logs where people have Norton and AVG or even AVG and Avast present and both running at the same time, and the op is complaining of a slooooowwww PC, well guess what....they are both fighting for the limited (in most cases) amounts of resources available.

Apply the KISS principle when fortifying your PC for safe surfing...

[JPnyc]

I find having one loaded and using online scans for the 2nd and 3rd opinions to be sufficient. I also change up the online scans I use for those other opinions. If you just use the same ones all the time, any malware it misses it will continue to miss.

[dalek]

I find having one loaded and using online scans for the 2nd and 3rd opinions to be sufficient. I also change up the online scans I use for those other opinions. If you just use the same ones all the time, any malware it misses it will continue to miss.

Agreed, but if a user is doing this constantly you have to question their surfing and or opening attachments habits...bottom line is edumacation.

But the battleground is changing as we talk..

Security analysts are already writing eulogies for stand-alone, signature-based anti-virus, arguing that the industry will be forced to roll out converged security clients, offering multiple capabilities including anti-spyware, personal firewall, end-point policy enforcement and intrusion prevention as the foundation.
"We're already there," Kaspersky declared, when confronted with the dire predictions. "There are no stand-alone anti-virus products anymore. It's now anti-everything. You have to do things like behavior blocking and heuristic detections and add anti-spam, anti-spyware and anti-rootkit capabilities or your software won't be any good."
Add data leak prevention and patch and configuration management into a single console and this is your new enterprise anti-virus product.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895...MNL121806EP24A
So an AV that only scans for virus is not going to be good enough, the sector is moving to bring it all under the hood, perfect example now is Ewido being absorbed by AVG, my Trend Micro Internet Suite 2006 has had these functions for over a year now, and is probably why a lot of corporations are switching to them, an all in one troubleshooting centre.

[Moira]

That's very true - not that I can imagine Panda missing anything, it dug up folders I'd long forgotten were even on the system.

The problem is that the people who take the attitude we've advised here are not the kind of people to badly suffer from viruses anyway, because people who take security this seriously probably have enough common sense to avoid picking up more than occasional malware, which any one of the security measures on their PC would instantly pick up.

I think the reason viruses are still so widespread is down to the people who have outdated software on their systems, don't patch Windows and whose online behaviour predisposes them to picking up malware in the first place.

[JPnyc]

Agreed, but if a user is doing this constantly you have to question their surfing and or opening attachments habits...bottom line is edumacation.

That's true. I ran a pc with NO av and NO fw for 8 yrs, on win98! It can be done if you're careful and know what you're doing. I think I had only 4 things running at startup. I couldn't afford to upgrade back then, and had to keep the pc able to meet the ever growing demands of newer software, so I kept removing things that were running at startup to free up ram and processing power. Of course that means no AV and no FW because we know how much they suck up.

[JPnyc]

That's very true - not that I can imagine Panda missing anything, it dug up folders I'd long forgotten were even on the system.

The problem is that the people who take the attitude we've advised here are not the kind of people to badly suffer from viruses anyway, because people who take security this seriously probably have enough common sense to avoid picking up more than occasional malware, which any one of the security measures on their PC would instantly pick up.

I think the reason viruses are still so widespread is down to the people who have outdated software on their systems, don't patch Windows and whose online behaviour predisposes them to picking up malware in the first place.

And that's also completely true. It's not the pc savvy people that are most often infected. It's the novice. I can configure IE so that it's just about as secure as any of the other big 3 or 4 browsers out there (even though Opera still maintains an obscurity advantage), but for a novice I always recommend Firefox, even though I don't use it and don't like it. A novice user should not be using IE.