Is yoga crazy or not?
 

Many years ago my friend Nick from Calif told me:
-Yoga (well, he told no yoga ha ha ha) I never use antivirus programs.

• Nick, you are crazy and soon your PC will go to hell.

• No, more than year I have no virus. Just I visit not dangerous sites as porn etc.

OK. Keeping in memory these words I decided to follow Nick.
Well, from February 1-st 2012 I deactivated and removed my antivirus program Avast from all my PC.
Now, 6 mounts later I have no problems with viruses.

• Wait, wait yoga which sites do you visit during these months?
• Hmmm.. I visited every day AB, then BG info site Dnevnik (Diary), You tube and UESP/wiki.I hate social networks.

So question is not: To be or Not to be?
But
Is yoga crazy or not?


I think yoga is crazy..
:smile2:

Remind me never to accept game files from you :D

Yes. Always use proper protection, no matter how safe it seems.

You know not every virus does something to your computer that you would notice. Some of them are just keyloggers and the like or trojans picking up info on what sites you log into or any other details you enter into your computer. So yes you are crazy, you might not have some virus crashing your computer down or any virus at all but you are running a much higher risk of getting one and never knowing it.

It all depend of your computer knowledge and how you act on it.

First of all, surfing the web without any protection whatsoever is dead crazy.

If you don't want to use an antivirus program though, there is many other choices. My own choice is to prevent virus to be able to enter my computer before I even have to deal with them. This mean blocking Java, JavaScript, Flash and using ad blockers so I don't see the adds and banners on every site I visit.

Those adds and banners are from where the viruses and malware come from the most. I'd estimate about 95% of them all come from there.

The sad reality is that antivirus programs only offer an illusion of protection these days. Recent studies have shown that AVs will only effectively catch viruses when they spread to a large population, sometimes after infecting systems for months or even years. Fact is, any programmer with average level of knowledge can create a virus, and in theses cases, less than 10% will be caught immediatly by existing AVs. So, staying away from suspicious sites and not executing crazy stuff is still the best protection. Also, disabling scripts and stuff as mentioned eariler.

As a side note, some viruses simply cannot be detected after infection. Properly rootkited ones will hijack your OS and manage to conceal itself completely. Only with external scan, like an OS from another partition/HD would be possible to catch it. And yes, these have been observed in the wild.

(I haven't used AVs in ages also).

I'll feel bad when you click on [shady name].info.

In the last ~5 years I have regularly used the Internet my antivirus has never detected any infected files, only a few false positives (some old DOS games).
But I still wouldn't remove my antivirus. Better safe than sorry.

Wow!

What a "friendly fire" from good AB members.

Except John_Sabugs.
Ty, dear John.
:smile2:
I repeat> i visit only AB, Youtube,Uesp/viki and Bulgarian info site Diary.

No porn, no casinos!

No PayPal or like in my PC.

No any social net.

Do not believe me?

Ok. Enter Google and write down word "yoga". Enter. You will receive 406 000 000 results, but no my pic(s) or other info.
Because i avoid membership(s) in any site(s).

I know very well that NO absolute save or protection. But keeping good save Inet behavior one may reduces the risk of threads.

I know very well that the situation from book 1984 of George Orwell step by step is approaching now.
The Big Brother is here. Your location is known, your habits are known, BB knows very much about us.

..

yes, yoga is crazy.
But who is crazy yoga?
He is the brave..

ha ha ha

My dear all,
our world progressed because of crazy ones.


yoga the wizard

No one cares enough about you to Big Brother you Yoga. In reality you not having Anti virus doesn't just affect you, it ends up affecting others too. You might have trojans and keyloggers on your PC that can't steal any of your info because you don't use it, but from your computer they can spread out possibly passing other peoples protection because they trust that you are protected and so on and so on. So as Lulu said I will never accept any files from you, they could be infected with anything and you wouldn't know. Safe internet practice involves using firewalls and antivirus programs to protect yourself from things that slip past your good internet browsing.

Edit: Not to mention the only reason you don't pop up on Google search is because the user name Yoga is exactly the same as the workout method of yoga. Simply adding Abandonia to the search I found you straight away.

Ha ha ha

Paranoia

That's 99% of the internet, and you cannot use it. :no:

You raise a good point there...

Let's not forget the 0.5+% that comes from free music downloads and file sharing stuff. So he can only use less than 0.5% of it the internet and its almighty power. Poor guy.

You're right. XD I'm not very careful about what sites I visit, but I care about security, since like most people I use the computer for everything including banking etc. But I have very little faith in anti virus software , I think Jonh Sabugs is very right on the money. However I do use it because it does no harm either. (This means I don't use the kind that ask you about stuff, I tried them in the past but I don't think they offer better protection after all.)

Anti virus software is a minor and auxiliary part of computer security. It's like in a movie, that tiny object someone carries in his shirt pocket, and when he's shot it stops the bullet and saves his life. Well that means he got lucky, not that it was an adequate protection. (Although I'm not saying the odds are comparable, it's just an illustration.)

Remember those hated UAC popups in Windows Vista (which were relaxed in Windows 7 because of consumer feedback)?
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/...ccount-control

Disabling this Windows feature is the single most damaging move you can make against your own security. Installing anti virus software while having this disabled (like most people do) is like walking around in the jungle where any wild animal can eat you, but wearing a helmet. And some of the people who complain about UAC being too annoying use one of the very popular client firewalls, which are pretty much useless, and far more annoying.

I could go on, but the point is that people's idea that having anti virus software makes you safe and not having it makes you unsafe, is radically wrong.

In Yoga's defense, there is anti-virus software that behaves suspiciously like a virus itself.

Norton, I am looking at you.

I completely disagree. Not only AV are very resource hungry, some of them are actually harmful for your system. Norton is a prime example!

What about other operating systems as Windows?

I also don't have any antivirus software on my Linux PCs...
Did anyone get some experience with malware on Linux?

I think that since a majority of users here are PC gamers, that they won't be willing to change their operating system to Linux.

Poor gay.

No intention to make someone change.

However, ScummVM and DOSBox are both available on Linux...

I know they are, but a lot of games (sadly) aren't available on it natively. You could use WINE, but I think one would be better off dual-booting. But that will take away some of my precious HDD space.

It would be easier to just browse safely....

Steam is releasing a linux version soon though. Apparently Left For Dead 2 is the first title making the move.

GABEN RULES OVER ALL :)

I already forgot that there are also other games than abandoned ones. :-)

Might sound strange, on a Windows system I'd almost suffer a heart attack if there is no antivirus software while I use Linux without (even for serious stuff including online banking).
Never had any issues with malware and never heard of anybody who had.

The old gods have answered my prayers. Let's just wait for the FreeBSD version...

Sadly, a lot of games on GOG aren't available on Linux natively. It'll probably be better (and cheaper) to just get the game used. :( </firstworldproblems>

This thread needs a poll. :perv:
Yoga is crazy, regardless of anti-virus consumption. :whistling:

:hihihi:
Thank You, dear BranjoHello, for the sincere note.

May I very politely quote some text from my favorite book Alice in the wonderland by Lewis Carrol?
Chapter V – Pig and pepper
Dialog between Cheshire Cat and Alice:
..But I don't want to go among mad people, Alice remarked.
..Oh, you can't help that, said the Cat; we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.
How do you know I'm mad? said Yoga.
..You must be, said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here...

it's like having Sex w/o protection. Do I really have to say more?


yea, a bit...

you don't seem to care and are making jokes about this important topic. And this pisses me off. Your PC is prolly some spam station which shits out a billion mails of the Nigerian Prince a day and this isn't funny. Your PC is high likely in some botnet which are used to crack passwords, shut down networks and whatnot!

It was already said but I feel the need to repeat it:

you affect others with your careless behaviour.

Think about it.


Ignorance is no excuse.

You've given up your security willingly. So your PC was one to shutdown PSN? Nice reason to get sued... have fun idiot.

I want to add something similar KazeeXXL mentioned:

I'm currently mailing with people with different parts of the world.
As we don't know each other, we keep e-mails text-only and "attached files" are only links to pictures and videos that were already published somewhere official (wikipedia, YouTube, etc.).

Yet, I happened to correspond with some people "just connected to Internet". They seemed to be unaware any AV is needed.
I started to get numerous spam from them, as my e-mail was on their contact list. I know they did not send any of it on purpose.
(fortunately I have separate e-mail for these purposes)
I wonder if any of their viruses got THEIR computer visibly affected in any negative way, but it's possible that it didn't.

Finally, I had to block e-mails from their e-mail address. Bad luck, isn't it?

Still, I bet their computer is, as already mentioned, spamming other people and attacking computers as an element of some botnet :suspicious:

EDIT PS. Times when computer virus was the one showing "Hello! You have a virus LOL" on your screen are gone.
Now the more invisible a virus is, the more efficiency it has.

Begone!
 

Sir,
please do not enter more my threads, posts and like.
you are in my Ignore list forever.
i do not like rude persons like you.
Basta!!

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and you are all entitled to like or dislike these opinions, but let's not get into name calling please.

Let's move onwards and upwards :)

OK,
dear Lulu_Jane,
i will bury the tomahawk.
yoga (not my avatar name) is peaceful "religion".
:3:

Thank you Yoga :D

I shall think of you this afternoon when I'm practicing the other kind of yoga :)

Bad luck? Not at all. Simply the case of yet another idiot who didn't know what he was doing.

Ehy yoga, yes you are crazy. :smile2:

If you really don't feel the need of an AV you should try to use a light firewall, at least you can control in/out traffic, it's also easy to identify if your pc has been infected and if a malware is trying to access the net.

what the actual fuck?

I get a point @infraction because I called this guy an idiot which he obviously is???

Some people here tried to be nice to him and told him what he is doing and he made jokes of this whole important topic. That was the point when I decided not to be Mr.NiceGuy here.

Seriously, whoever defends such careless behaviour: you're an idiot, too.

This is so ridiculous...

and this guy still doesn't show any sign of understanding or deeper insight in this whole matter hence you just can call him an idiot. That's the proper term for people like this.

It's not an insult, it's a simple statement.

http://i.imgur.com/N78Uv.gif

You can think whatever you want. You are free to, it is a right.

What is not a right is to go down to name calling. And you got a small warning because of it because it do seem like you do need to understand how things work in civilized discussions.

Now, you're right. You got a warning: deal with it. Thing is, with what you just said here you're more than likely to get a second warning.

Such is life.

yea, give me a second warning and a third if you must.

this won't change that this guy obviously is an idiot.

shrugs

anyway, I don't give a flying fuck. ban me if you must.

And how should I do that? I'm not even part of the staff. :p

:whistling:
Grazie, Caro Dave,
for sincere note.

Because You are very kind person i will tell You a secret:
Yes, i use Firewall.
Moreover, i use the program System mechanic, which helps me to be safe.

Moreover, i have 2 PC. All important info is carefully recorded on both PC. So I am ready to operate from any PC if the crash occurs.

I am not careless at all. No and No.
Moreover, from the beginning of my test (February 1-st, 2012) till now there are no any complains from my correspondents. There are about 10. All is normal.
I am not member of any social net.
I am visiting about 4 sites now: AB, Inet radio, BG diary Dnevnik and one more.
If You write down the word yoga in Google, You will find 427 000 000 answers for 0.27 sec, but nothing for me.

Be fair and answer me: Do You was virused till now?

Ciao, amigo!

PS: Sorry, i have also very old PC which i use as tester machine. I tried to uninstall Avast AV. Impossible.
So, the Q is: Is the AV virus also?
ha ha ha
Our discussion is like:
-Who is the first - egg or hen?
:D

yea but it's not the first time you act as you were. So become part of the staff then you can talk to people like that.

I'm outtie

Another warning is given KrazeeXXL, next time you gain a vacation to cool down the spirits.
Respect other people and let's try to have a civil discussion please.

Of course, I was virused in the past, and it was mainly my fault, I was looking for DOS games and you know the cake is appetizing :)
It was a matter of poor experience.

I agree with you that how you surf the net helps, however protection is never enough, last time I went to a typing office and I found my USB key infected, without an antivirus it would have spread to my PCs, friends, parents in a very silent way.

I'm pretty confident that the first wasn't the egg, but even the hen!

:3:
ha ha ha
Mama mia, Caro Dave,
the theme we discuss now very, very politely is important.
Something like Quiz problem :doh:.

OFF
Excellent answer of egg/hen Q.
But the next is very difficult...
In the dark ages in Italy was very diff. Q:
- How many devils can stand on the very top of a pin?

...cont. our polite discussion ..
Do You know that brave use to do every single day Restore point of both PC?
And You will agree with me that every new medicine is tested on voluntaries?
Pls. this evening before close Your eyes to think:
Maybe, maybe the AV companies create the viruses to increase their profits?

Ciao.

The heretic aka brave

Actually, it's not a statement. It would be a statement if you had documented proof he suffers from a very specific form of mental disability. Since you don't have access to his medical records, you have no grounds to make such a statement - thus making your use of the term pure libel.
Let's make things clear:
1. You are welcome to have an opinion.
2. You are welcome to express said opinion.
3. You are NOT welcome to do so by using derogatory terms towards other forum users.
4. If you can't make use of #2 without breaking #3, you are required to STFU and then your choice of GTFU or GTFO.
5. #3 and #4 apply no matter how deserving of those term you believe they are.
6. If #4 is because of a specific person, you are welcome to place him (or her) on your ignore list.

http://i.imgur.com/N78Uv.gif

ah the fifth horseman with his stfu and gtfo talk. this thread wouldn't be complete w/o that...

talking about insulting others... As I said. So ridiculous.

http://i.imgur.com/QW4lN.jpg

I've been a moderator on this board for several years in the past. But even then, I don't need a special position to display common sense.

Comment edited to deletion for joke suckyness.

Is that so? :unsure: I wonder who is the craziest between (H)yoga :wacko: and KrazeeXXL :hypno:... :dunno: :what: :whistling: :bleh2: :umm:

Ladies and Gentlemen, the big winner and champion is... *thriller sounds* XD :clap:

Dear (H)yoga,

Hmmm... I know the best kind of yoga :drool: :love: :lust: :whistling::



I wonder if I am “mentally drunken” Burp! and/or “mentally on drugs”... :wacko: :hypno: :beer: :tease:

Now. I will stop messing around. :2thumbs: Sorry. I guess I went too far. :(

Dear yoga, I am sorry to inform you a bad news.

Please take a good look at the opinions of users on Amazon and read very carefully.

A user said “I’m now up to version 12.x. I got away from the “pro” version to the regular System mechanic because they stopped using Kaspersky antivirus.”

I do not know which antivirus technology the company iolo uses, whether it is third-party or proprietary. Remembering that awesome firewalls such as Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro (defunct :() and Comodo have average or worse AVs. Then what about iolo???

I know that someone may question results and performance tested by certain organizations, but this is better than nothing. You can check, know and learn more about AV from the links below:

• AV-Comparatives: “Austr(al)ian independent organization that tests and assesses antivirus software, regularly releasing charts and reports that are freely available to the public and the media.”

• AV-TEST: “German/Herman/Sherman independent organization which evaluates and rates antivirus and security suite software for Microsoft Windows and Android operating systems, according to a variety of criteria. Every other month, the researchers publish the results of their testing, where they list which products they awarded their certification.”

Hahaha. Do not. Poke. The bear.

Bear in mind...
 

Please bear in mind :facts:: The mother bear bears little bears. After the little bears are bigger, the mother bear bears the pranks of her cubs (little bears). Then, she must be very patient and should be practicing (H)yoga. :zen: :2thumbs: :bleh1:

Whoops! :whops: Whoa! Eeek! How scary! “Never Scratch a Tiger with a Short Stick” :tiger: :poke2: :tiger:

(Mel) Gibson Research and Matousec.com
 

By the way, dear yoga. You can verify if your firewall is really, really good and stealth to crackers (evil hackers).

You can check 02 sites below:

• Gibson Reserch Corporation

Their most famous service is ShieldsUP!.

And you can learn about his history:

President and Founder, (Mel) Gibson Research Corporation
Located in Laguna (Loire) Hills, CA 92653

• Matousec.com

They are Czech group that perform a test-set of leak-tests to all known software including PC firewalls named Proactive Security Challenge 64.

You can check the results of the tests here.

Some people question tests and results performed by Matousec.com, but the page about this on Wikipedia was deleted or removed for (unknown) reason...

Some Additional Tips
 

I forgot to mention some tips:

AV-Comparatives:

There are some nice, useful, important and interesting info on these links below:

• IT Security Tips;

• List of AV Vendors (PC);

• List of Mobile Security Vendors - 01) AV-Comparatives classified Line (subsidiary of the Naver) as Japanese. Wrong. Line is South Korean. 02) AV-Comparatives classified Trend Micro as Japanese. Wrong. Trend Micro is Taiwanese-American. Now, they correct their previous error about Trend Micro, but they still labeled Line as Japanese :dunno:;

• Approved Windows 10 Security Products.

The Hand of Fate
 

At least, he can still use his right hand... :love: :lust: The Hand of Fate! :rocks: :kuger: :hihihi:

Startup Manager
 

Dear yoga,

It’s been a long time since I’ve used these programs, so I may be outdated. :old:

But at the time, you could use Startup Manager like (MS Config) to analyze and disable annoying programs. With the German/Herman/Sherman Ashampoo WinOptimizer, you have the Startup Tuner. I know System Mechanic also has a similar function, but I've always found that WinOptimizer had a more user friendly GUI. Just like the German/Herman/Sherman TuneUp Utilities (now subsidiary of AVG - now subsidiary of avast :wacko: :hypno:).

Ashampoo... Ah! Shampoo!
 

Ashampoo... Ah! Shampoo! You smell so nice... And so beautiful!... :drool: :love: :lust: :perv: :sneakrete:

Disk Cloning Software as Backup!
 

After tormenting (H)yoga so much :p, it is my final post in this thread. I will talk about disk cloning software.

Since my English skills really sucks, I will transcribe/copy some info from Wikipedia:



“Acronis True Image is a software product produced by Acronis that provides data protection including, backup, archive, access and recovery for Microsoft, OSX, iOS and Android operating systems. As disk imaging software, True Image can restore the previously captured image to another disk, replicating the structure and contents to the new disk, also allowing disk cloning and partition resizing, even if the new disk is of a different capacity. The backups are in a proprietary format which saves using a .tib filename format. Acronis was launched in 2003 and has over 5 million consumers and 500,000 businesses as users.”

“Acronis has licensed custom versions of Acronis True Image to certain hard disk manufacturers, including Western Digital's Acronis True Image WD Edition, Intel Data Migration Software and Seagate DiscWizard. Such editions are free to download and use, but only with that manufacturer's hard drives.”

Several years ago, after suffering from operating system problems, I tried to find the best programs to back up the data since Windows System Restore (Windows XP and Windows 7) really is very limited and unsatisfactory.

I discovered that one of the best programs is Acronis True Image 2010. Later versions left a lot to be desired and I have looked for better alternatives such as Macrium Reflect and EaseUs. Awful mistake! :wall:

Macrium Reflect, at first, restored Disc images perfectly, although the creation and verification of image integrity took a long time. Besides the time consuming restoration as well. We lost a SSD HDD (500 GB) because of Macrium Reflect’s incompetence. I will never use Macrium again! :lynch: :hairpull: :palm: :headslap:

The size of the image created using Macrium Reflect was at least 50% larger than that created using Acronis True Image selecting maximum compression. :headslap: :palm: :lame:

EaseUs was a program below expected. Besides, the lifetime key was supposed to be “lifetime”. But it was not, because with every upgrade, you would have to spend money again! :tomato: :palm: :lame:

During this period, I bought Acronis (201? :dunno: :unsure:), but after installing on the PC, I rebooted the PC. The reboot of the PC was taking forever, without proceeding. After I complained about it, I requested a refund of the money paid and they immediately returned it. :2thumbs:

Now with Acronis True Image 2017, my big brother has used the software again and it is great against crashes due to incompatibility of software, drivers, virus infection, restoring exactly when it worked perfectly at that time.

The System Restore merely restore partially and well limited to an earlier point to my dismay.

According to Wikipedia, “beginning with Windows Vista, System Restore monitors all system file types on all file paths on a given volume, so there is no issue of incomplete restoration.

It is not possible to create a permanent restore point. All restore points will eventually be deleted after the time specified in the RPLifeInterval registry setting is reached or earlier if allotted disk space is insufficient. Even if no user or software triggered restore points are generated allotted disk space is consumed by automatic restore points. Consequently, in systems with little space allocated, if a user does not notice a new problem within a few days, it may be too late to restore to a configuration from before the problem arose.

For data integrity purposes, System Restore does not allow other applications or users to modify or delete files in the directory where the restore points are saved. On NTFS volumes, the Restore Points are protected using ACLs. Since its method of backup is fairly simplistic, it may end up archiving malware such as viruses, for example in a restore point created before using antivirus software to clean an infection. Antivirus software is usually unable to remove infected files from System Restore; the only way actually to delete the infected files is to disable System Restore, which will result in losing all saved restore points; otherwise they will remain until Windows deletes the affected restore points. However stored infected files in themselves are harmless unless executed; they will only pose a threat if the affected restore point is reinstated. Windows System Restore is not compatible with restore points made by third party applications.

Changes made to a volume from another OS (in case of dual-boot OS scenarios) cannot be monitored. In addition, dual-booting different versions of Windows can disrupt the operation of System Restore. Specifically, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 delete the checkpoints the Windows Vista and later has created. Also, checkpoints created by Windows 8 may be destroyed by previous versions of Windows.”

The steps to create images using Acronis True Image
 

After my boring and exhaustive postings *phew*, I wll finally write down the steps to create the images in a “perfect” sequence (especially for perfectionists like me):

01) After installing the Operating System, create an image using Acronis True Image;

02) After installing Windows Update updates;

03) After activation of the Operating System;

04) After the installation of Microsoft Office;

05) After installing updates from Microsoft Update (Windows Update + Office Update + Updates from any Microsoft products);

06) After activation of the Office;

07) After installing the latest drivers;

08) After installing the latest versions of the softwares;

09) After installing Internet Security of your choice;

10) You can create image periodically.

It is clear that this step is only a parameter because you have the freedom to adjust it according to your convenience.

Mystvan is crazier than yoga, im pretty sure of that :smile2:

Both yoga and Mystvan are crazy but that is OK :OK:

(Un)funny (Bad) Jokes vs. (H)yoga
 

I am addicted to (un)funny (bad) jokes :lol: while yoga is really addicted to (H)yoga. :zen: :dance: :monkey: :hero:

How to check and update your softwares
 

Finally, it is my last post in this thread *phew*. I hope my posts my help someone like (H)yoga. :zen: . These programs check and verify if your softwares on your PC are really updated or need to update. They notify you if there are the latest versions of your softwares.

• Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit - it is really a nice software and scan Microsoft Updates and softwares. The software shows the report by opening a tab in your default browser;

• CNET Download App - From the CNET Download.com - Check only some softwares, the software freezes sometimes :suspicious:;

• FileHippo.com Update Checker - From FileHippo.com - Check only some softwares and shows the report by opening a tab in your default browser;

• Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) - Well-known software in the area of security. Unfortunately, it can freezes :headslap:;

• Smart File Advisor - This little software comes together with Alcohol 120%. It shows notification above your System Tray;

• SUMo - Software Update Monitor - One of the best and complete softwares. It only does not scan LG PC Suite, UMPlayer and Mac Blu-ray Player. It can scan drivers too! :2thumbs: - But you should download the lite version (without adware)!

I recommend not to upgrade your softwares from these programs as they are not perfect. I recommend that you go to the developer homepage to confirm the existence of the new (latest) version, download and update the software. Avoid the blue screen of Windows. It is better to be safe than sorry.

I learned that Kaspersky AV used Secunia technology to check for outdated software and / or security holes for lack of updates or inadequate Windows settings. I wonder if there are some AV which can match for KAV. Perhaps NOD32 or Bitdefender?