Weekend Open Forum: Do you keep antivirus protection running 24/7?

My Anti virus is 95% OFF ..

Lots of people are saying how they don't use AV and have no problems but do they expect malware to shout out "HELLO, VIRUS HERE!" when it's installed itself? It's just going to chunter away in the background mailing out crap & stealing your details.

It seems there's such little performance hit & hardware is always getting more powerful, it seems like hubris not to have any AV software installed at all.

I wonder how much spam is sent out from smug geeks who think they're too clever to be part of a botnet?

Might as well leave it going all the time, it hardly uses any RAM up and the obvious advantages of having it running are worth it.

I aint tried anything else sinse i tried Avast 4.8 Pro.

Main PC Win Boot: Norton IS 2011 24/7 + Win7, Linux Boot: N/A, laptops Avast latest. Used to use MSE even from v1, but recent incident on my brothers PC made me to switch from it. Don't get me wrong, MSE is great and I did lots of beta testing for Micro$oft, but I think Avast custom install with per PC settings has better protection. Of course, common sense IS the best protection.

when disable for games, is good or bad?

i use avast is, but i thinking at new nis or vipre.

uses avast for real-time protection, but i need malwarebytes too for ocassional checking. tried MSE and didnt like it.

these days i rarely get infected. most infection came from dirty friends' drives.

No need to have an anti-virus running all the time. Firefox with Adblock Plus, NoScript, and Flashblock is enough. If you know where and what you're downloading you'll be fine.

I got Avast and Avira running on my Windows XP laptop and desktop respectively. My only paid AV is Webroot Internet Security Essentials which is on my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit desktop. I know it's a bit of an overkill on the Win 7 rig but as long as there is no noticeable performance hit, I guess it's better safe than sorry.

The only time I disable AV, firewall, etc. is when playing games, otherwise they're running. I'm also behind a NAT firewall/router. Haven't been infected for over 5 years.

i have Avast! but keep it disabled, only enabling it when i'm knowingly clicking on suspicious websites.

i see antivirus software becoming less popular since the internet isn't as large as it once was in terms of people frequenting the same handful of websites over and over again. gone are the days where different information was spread out over a lot of different websites and the internet actually felt huge.

i could start a rant about the demise of the vastness the internet once showed, but not in the mood for it right now.

I use Avast professional and it runs 24/7. I leave my computer running 24/7 and I have it set to scan at 3AM every morning. The 3AM scan is set thorough and is mostly a reminder I need to get off my computer if I'm up late. If I want to do anything "risky" on the internet I pop in my bootable linux jumpdrive

I got Nod32 24/7, and so far it has done its job like a champ. It's superior to MSE, and I would argue it consumes less resources.

I mentioned using Norton AV and I like it just fine, but have recently heard of one called Vipre. Anyone know anything about it? It's supposed to be pretty good and very easy on resources.

Dont prefer to run 24x7. I dont prefer to install them in first place. Only install free antivirus if i feel my pc is a bit slow to work on and notice some virus in my pc. Or else its a big NO

I think it's naive to say you don't need any form of protection. It's true that a lot of AV's are resource hogs and there certainly isn't a 'one size fits all' approach to malware defence. I run Ubuntu with no AV although I do scan occasionally with BitDefender. I run Windows 7 with an AV (Bullguard) and XP with no AV. I use SuRun on XP which takes the same approach as Linux and UAC. You can read about that here....

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-add-additional-layer-security-your-pc.htm

If using Windows, browser protection such as Sandboxie is also a very good idea in my opinion and excellent add-ons such as AdBlock Plus or NoScript. The whole blacklist approach that AV's used to take is very outdated now anyway, as always, prevention is better than cure. Peerblock is a very good preventative program to run, or/and Threatfire, SpywareBlaster, WinPatrol etc.

Common sense cant be downloaded though unfortunately and some people are always just gonna ask for trouble in the way that they use the internet.

For all those who do not have any Anti-Virus Program running, how is it that you can say you've had no problems when you do not have the capability to detect anything that may be lurking. Things might seem fine, but a quick scan would prove that you are being less than wise.

Computer viruses aren't made by teenagers for a laugh anymore, they're made by criminal organisations, so rather than just messing up your PC they're designed to remain undetected and function as keyloggers. So it's very possible all these "I never use antivirus programs and never get viruses" types are mistaken.

Don't use any and don't see a reason why I should. Atleast not a good enough one to have something so invasive in system.

Do not use virus scanner

Use Linux, no need to scan for viri.

Still need to scan for malware, anyone can get that. Just need to download corrupted page.

I can't believe how many people have posted that use MS Security Essentials. I use it as well on both my desktop and netbook. It's a pretty lightweight security suite and gets the job done.