Is paying for antivirus a waste of money?

blutos cousin said:

In the interest of civil free discussion I edited my last post

Well how thoughtful aren't youest! Now to get some of these others around who never say what they think about free or paid??? hhhmmm... "motivational therapy session now beginning!"
(extended sessions may not be however)

Well now that I have been running with paid for since 2010 guess who decided to follow the Internet Security trail finally? Well it isn't quite Grisoft anymore either. The description of no longer being just a virus remover tends to sum up what you would want to see in any program you pay for at this time however.

When Sunbelt introduced the new kid on the block some time back all those "ole boys club" companies took notice later when they were getting past by! So what the rest of yas thinkin bout?

I have zero need or desirer to pay for any AV. If you do.. fine but don't try to convince people that they're incorrect. This
is about personal choice.

BunnyJ said:

I have zero need or desirer to pay for any AV. If you do.. fine but don't try to convince people that they're incorrect. This
is about personal choice.

Right all that was my issue aside from the effectiveness vs effectiveness arguments about all this ..................Some may say Night hawk is head banging persistent on his position here like I been with my rebuttals he seems OK outside this AV software discussion poison but I'm done with this debate....... I'm right anyway

Glad We aint debating overpriced bling power and other cables with Snob Audiophiles !

I seen them pay $4500.00 for a 2 meter Audioquest (or something ) PCM data cables for incredibly overpriced bling CDP transports when a 2m $2.00 -$5.00 PCM ready made cable will work just the same ,seen them pay
$900.00- $1400.00 for 6ft HDMI or USB cables too all without any basis in electrical conductivity science.

....besides most the music and the legacy analog studio safety masters at the labels all is recorded on spinning metal anyway for like ~40 years .......outside of a PC for ripping CDs and some cars CD's are irrelevant now !

Those discussions usually turn vitriolic with the snob audiophiles defending arguments with no base in electrical conductivity science or common sense .

Disclaimer : I'm not conflating or equating this discussion with all that .

Well it's much like something one former president stated when you compare bananas to green beans or anything else. the "WEs" have to be right 100% of the time while the "THEMs" referring to malware writers only once! Nothing is ever 100% since someone will always be able to find a vulnerability. But simply being over confident is where most run into problems.

Being in a position where I end up with the need to screen a large variety of sites good and bad out there at times one find was seeing where investing in more then just the typical av removal is what would then be able to offer the preventions as well as protections. 100% prevention simply means not being plugged into the web anywhere! But even back when there were stand alone non connected pcs you had dos bugs by way of removable media shared between machines!

Security in open source as well as MS browsers can be another topic entirely. Smart screen as well as the latest FF 45 both missed one little bug that passes itself as a normal app something that WD didn't even pick up on! That happened a week ago while the av software was turned off during a web search. Regardless of the preferences and why an opinion poll would be good here of what you use you first need to assess the risk factors involved as far as your normal routines. Did you know security softwares are the actual largest software industry besides OSs and gaming in general since the corporations have huge assets at risk while the home user doesn't generally know how to go about removing bugs on their own.

Too often a business calls in a service while a home user brings their system to some local repair shop and still ends up paying out! In sense no matter which way you look you can end up paying some price! But that's what keeps the pc economy going as well. In fact the best movie title that fits all this to a bill simply went by the title "Never Ending Story"! Where you may thinks things are always going to be 100% safe surprise! It isn't always the case.

The best protections besides being totally isolated are to expect the worst while hoping for the best using that common sense not so much for just what you decide to put on but frequently backing up the heck out of everything preparing for the Zero Day factor when something does strike.

This is often why some prefer Cloud over local storage to prevent contamination of files stored locally while others are simply not in favor of Cloud anything. But for a Poll question how many can simply take their OS drive and simply toss it to the wolves and not worry about losing something? It's a tough call either way!