Post by Munroe on Feb 26, 2013 3:49:26 GMT -5
I haven't ran an anti-virus regularly since 2008.
Nor did I run one from 2002 until 2005.
I did run one from 2005 until 2008 because it was free to me as a student.
As far as I can tell, I've been virus-free because I generally follow the tips Death and Reaper outlined at the end.
I use Firefox web browser (and occasionally Chrome), and stay up-to-date with the latest version, and I do manually install Windows XP updates as they become available via the auto-updater.
One bad habit I have is I do open my emails from unknown senders, but I don't follow the bogus links inside. I informed my sister a week ago that her Yahoo account is sending out malicious emails. (I've received 2 from her so far.)
I recently updated from Thunderbird 4 to Thunderbird 17, so my email client is current again finally. (They had been releasing service patches to Thunderbird 4, but they finally indicated those will cease soon.) The main reason I wasn't updating is because I was worried about the new version not supporting my older email data but it came over fine. (Upgrading email clients used to be a much bigger hassle than it is now.)
I do occasionally take a drive image of my primary hard drive though with the free version of Macrium Reflect. (The free version is limited to whole drive images only.) My emails and all my other significant data are stored on secondary hard drives, so if I do get something unpleasant installed on my primary hard drive, I can re-image it from a backup image. Haven't had to do that so far, which is good since I only thought to image my PC again last week after a good year from the last image I took. (Even though it only takes approximately 9 minutes to take an image of the drive.)
I have reinstalled from an image before when I switched the drive I was using for my primary hard drive, so the imaging software works.
My parents run anti-virus software and it seems to work for them. They used to get all kinds of mal-ware on their computer. I was like "What did you click on?!" I don't know. You've got to be diligent while using the Internet.
Nor did I run one from 2002 until 2005.
I did run one from 2005 until 2008 because it was free to me as a student.
As far as I can tell, I've been virus-free because I generally follow the tips Death and Reaper outlined at the end.
I use Firefox web browser (and occasionally Chrome), and stay up-to-date with the latest version, and I do manually install Windows XP updates as they become available via the auto-updater.
One bad habit I have is I do open my emails from unknown senders, but I don't follow the bogus links inside. I informed my sister a week ago that her Yahoo account is sending out malicious emails. (I've received 2 from her so far.)
I recently updated from Thunderbird 4 to Thunderbird 17, so my email client is current again finally. (They had been releasing service patches to Thunderbird 4, but they finally indicated those will cease soon.) The main reason I wasn't updating is because I was worried about the new version not supporting my older email data but it came over fine. (Upgrading email clients used to be a much bigger hassle than it is now.)
I do occasionally take a drive image of my primary hard drive though with the free version of Macrium Reflect. (The free version is limited to whole drive images only.) My emails and all my other significant data are stored on secondary hard drives, so if I do get something unpleasant installed on my primary hard drive, I can re-image it from a backup image. Haven't had to do that so far, which is good since I only thought to image my PC again last week after a good year from the last image I took. (Even though it only takes approximately 9 minutes to take an image of the drive.)
I have reinstalled from an image before when I switched the drive I was using for my primary hard drive, so the imaging software works.
My parents run anti-virus software and it seems to work for them. They used to get all kinds of mal-ware on their computer. I was like "What did you click on?!" I don't know. You've got to be diligent while using the Internet.