Antivirus Software, a hole in the mesh.

#antivirussoftware #antivirus #security

Antivirus, that subscription fee that no-one wants to pay, some have too much, some have too little, some people just don't have it at all.  I'm not going to pretend like I'm a saint and have never gone without it, but I sure as hell have.  Even with anti-virus no-one is 100% safe, there are still a cleft in the armor between 100% safe, and immanent fall from grace.  The easiest to fix problem in that armor?  Yourself.

That's right, most viruses, malware, and worms don't just happen.  As a matter of fact, only worms have nothing to do with humans, they do what they are programmed to do and leap from computer to computer all nimbly bimbly from tree to tree like a cat.  For the most part, its human intervention that gets viruses, malware, and the whole lot onto a computer in the first place.  No I'm not saying there is a cluster of folks out in the world going "you know what I haven't gotten in a while?  A virus, I do declare its time to indulge in failure."  No its the opposite, its those of us who don't know the difference between reading, and clicking haphazardly with the desire to procure something without using thought at all.  And look, I've been that guy, I've clicked relentlessly countless times, running 5 minutes behind and I just want a program without thinking just to get bombarded with a typhoon of horrors that absolves hours of my time.  Saved 5 minutes by wasting 4 hours, woo hoo.

With all of that said, I want to say there is light at the end of the tunnel.  We can learn a few tricks to get past our failures and relieve ourselves of absolution.  Lets start with reading.  I know, difficult sounding task right?  I say that in humor, yes I know it sounds pathetic but most of us don't read anything when it comes to computers, for some reason there is an inordinate level of fear and intimidation that people just give up on trying.  Just yesterday I had someone trying to setup an account who called me after every step was completed because they didn't want to mess up anything, when the instructions were on the screen.  The words uttered from my lips, and the ones on the screen are identical, trust your reading comprehension and do what makes sense.  We are going to use this badboy from Java as our example.  How often do we log into someone elses computer just to see the ask toolbar?  This thing is a pain, everyone has it, its a playground for exploitation, and utterly useless.  I believe even the creators could give two craps about this thing, who uses ask.com?  The reason everyone and their mother has the toolbar is... see that little check box?  Its checked by default, in a rush no-one reads these things and out of fear just put them on their systems.  10 minutes later they are complaining "I didn't install anything, I don't know how it got there," last time I said "you didn't read" I got yelled at.  Realistically that was the problem, always read what you're clicking.

To continue on with the reading situation, lets talk about the words we read the second we see them.  Virus, malware, hacker, you.  Even if we have no intentions of reading whats on the screen, a scary popup will make someone believe anything.  For example this "antivirus 360" thing... I don't even know what this crap is, but to the untrained eye, this is utterly mortifying.  Out of nowhere, between a facebook post, and tilling the fields of your farmville, this pops up?  The immediate knee jerk reaction is obvious, follow the instructions on how to banish the fowl demons from the depths of your hard drive.  And that's the point, what is this AntiVirus360 thing?  Did you ever install it?  No, then why did it run?  Due to a level of suspicion it should be apparent this isn't you, you didn't run this, it is something else.  Something isn't right.  Which its not, this is a very popular type of deception, leading the end user to believe they are infected and they follow the steps.  These steps only bury more viruses, and worse viruses deep into the bowels of your computer system.  They function in the same capacity as those "you're the millionth visitor to this website" by clicking any of those buttons, you're agreeing silently to the terms and downloading something you shouldn't have.

Really what everything boils down to is trust and taking advantage of it.  An anti-virus can only do so much, if you tell a program it can run, the anti-virus can't override what you've said.  If you give permission for any program to run that shouldn't that's on your end, not the computers.  Reading and thinking about the actions being done is, and always will be the greatest anti-virus a computer can have.  Do you still need anti-virus?  Heck yes you do, when a script on a site wants to run on its own without permission, that anti-virus can save your day.  Even if you're using the Free Anti-virus solutions like AVG or AVAST you're better off.  As far as anti-virus solutions go though.  I personally use either webroot or symantec.  As I'm good friends with Nic over at webroot, I am more than willing to pitch their product, but its not just that, I actually like it.  Had norton for the longest time, and thought it was the only solution.  But yeah I've learned a lot.  Definitely trust me some Webroot.

Now I'm not going to get into why I like one over another, or who I think is the best anti-virus on the market today, I just wanted to focus on the biggest flaw in antivirus software, that being the end user.  As a whole if we all learn a little bit from this article today, let it be this; read what you are doing, and think before you act.  I'll do a synopsis on antivirus software as a whole either tomorrow or a later date.  And as always be safe my goblins.

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