Running Windows without anti-virus software

I haven't had any anti-virus software on my laptop for years. No antivirus, anti-spam, antispyware no nothing. I'm running windows 7 with UAC turned up all the way.

 

about a year or so ago, i decided to try this, because one of the win 7 boards i was on had a guy saying the same thing. it all started well, but within a month i was plagued with spyware, and finally got a nasty virus that ended up making me wipe my entire system. afterwards i started using returnil, and it worked well, but as was mentioned earlier here, it was very inconvenient. i would forget, and make important changes that were erased as soon as i restarted. so killed that, and went back to av and spyware remover.
now, i use a standard account, have avast monitoring and use mwbamw and superantispyware. haven't had a problem in a long time now. avast is light on my system, and it doesn't bother me at all. with today's powerful computers of 16gb of ddr3, and giant dual fast hdd's, why worry about a minimal resource drain. and what do you have to do in your lives, that 20 seconds extra start up time is going to kill you?
i am on a hp dv7, with 600g drive, 1.7gh i7 and only 8gig of ram, and my system runs pretty fast with the programs i listed above running. in two weeks i will have a g74sx with an i7 2670qm 2.2, 16gb ddr3, a 750g 7200 and a 256 ssd. with all that, do i really need to worry about the resources of avast?

 

Running any OS without any security product (yes hello linux & mac osx users) is not secure. There is malware for every OS (hello again to linux & mac osx users) and it can spread so easily without any security products (no you don't have to click an .exe file or browse warez sites... joining a network at work/school/public with one infected machine is already enough + 7800 other ways).

Built-in security products are often a very good start.
E.g. UAC enabled + max settings + using a standard account, Applocker,..

How ever, 3rd party security products often add a lot of protection and have a more user friendly interface. Also they update much faster & more often which makes them less exploitable.

 

Not quite.

 

the major source of getting infection these days are via USB drives i suppose.. via internet, i think chrome n FF tackles them much better for an average user..unless the user decide to meet locals in his/her area..things are pretty much safe on browsing..may i call it secure browsing(?) but given the ratio of more than 50% users r still on IE, i better suggest to have a good AV protection

for me chrome / FF with adblock + WOT does the trick with free version of avast. never had any problem in last few yrs..

mmm..wait..i think last time when i tried updating my malwarebytes.i had a big issue dealing with lots of weird stuff..but then i ran the update when i was sleep walking/surfing the other night my fault..

 

The first that malware was able to bypass were windows fw and uac & default settings. Then after some time they added proactive defense (of e.g. kaspersky) and other stuff.. one month later kaspersky makes an update and the malware didn't work again

 

UAC turned up all the way, Autorun disabled, use a good sandboxing browser and think before you click 'yes' on those UAC dialogs. Keep a backup of your system.

Really I don't think you need a security suite unless you like to allow full privileges to p2p downloaded executables without thinking first.

I'm sure there are ways to bypass the UAC, like by forcing legit software that already has admin privileges to do the dirty work of a virus. A security suite would probably see the suspicious software and halt it.
So Security suites have their use, but not needed for everyone.

 

That's exactly what I wanted to say with my previous post

The problem I see in using UAC as only "defense" (It blocks everything that could harm you on max. settings.. atleast it should block 90% ) is that you either allow the program or don't. Some programs are coded very badly and need the admin rights altough they won't harm you. 90% of setup.exe's will need admin rights. So binding a setup.exe with a virus.exe would have the same UAC warning as a clean setup.exe (and you would press "yes" in both cases) but will infect you.

That's where 3rd party security suites are great. Also I find the UAC-information windows quite useless. I would wish a very detailed information. I want to know what exactly that file wants to do with the admin rights. That would make it much easier to decide if I want to give the program admin rights or not.