I have a feeling I may have done this poll before, but I didn't want to search through my old journal entries, or I'd never get back to work. I'm just curious.
I would like to note that when I worked for senator stupid, I used AVG on his computer, which saved his ass from a lot of malware except 0-day viruses, because he CLICKED EVERY DAMN THING IN SIGHT.
Teaching people how not to install a virus is not easy. By definition, I guess it will always keep changing a litte. It seems to me like some people get it and some people don't.
That would invalidate my answer, too. Speaking of invalidating my answer, I have the noscript firefox extension, too, but I don't think that counts, because it treats every web page equally. The ultimate decision is mine. I think if noscript counts, so does firefox, because it's just a widely useful tool that doesn't funnel your actions into doing something that can hurt you -- Malware was taken into consideration, in the writing of the software, but the software does not fundamentally change the way that my computer deals with incoming content. It's not inspecting everything and approving or disapproving it for the user. Old versions of IE are more like malware, in my mind, than firefox or noscript is like anti-malware software.
I always wanted to ask something like this on my friends list but couldn't phrase it in a way that didn't sound like "YOU CLICK ON TOO MANY THINGS YOU MORON".
I can see the benefit anyway, sort of, I just don't think that the virus checker's odds are much better than my own self-monitoring. My own self-monitoring + a virus guard would probably be better, but then I'd be annoyed when it's wrong the other way. I have a feeling that some day they'll probably get me, but I don't think preventing that will be worth countless years of virus checker subscriptions, slowing down my computer, and then there's still that chance that they beat the virus checker that one time.
I've just not, for whatever reason, ever had problems with viruses. Mind you, back in college, I used to carry a McAfee floppy in my purse like a condom, ready to protect my precious homework from the viruses running rampant in the computer labs. And I've always avoided Outlook like the disease vector it is. And I loathe IE. And I don't EVER download warez. And I can spot a bogus attachment from 500 miles off. So, maybe it's just that I naturally avoid a lot of the usual channels of infection.
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Old versions of IE are more like malware, in my mind, than firefox or noscript is like anti-malware software.
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