12 months without a virus scanner or firewall

[Sfor]

Opera is a great browser, indeed. It's abilities to block unwanted web contents is unmatched, to my knowledge. All I do not like in the Opera 9.21 is the problem with opening links, and the mail client.

The fully patched IE 6 SP1 does seem to be much safer. But, it does have many issues, still.

I've been observing numerous infections caused by unpatched IE, comming from sites that should be safe. I do believe, there is some sort of automated system attaching java downloaders to poorly secured web pages.

[galahs]

While there's every reason to suppose that this is a correct observation on your part, let's focus in also on what "galahs" found. Contrast the situation with XP. No matter *how* careful you are with XP, without a firewall you will be infected within a couple of minutes.

A lot of people say this, and it really irritates me because I have been using a Windows XP machine for about 2 months with no virus protection/firewall and all has been fine. I only have Service Pack 2, no further updates. So how people can say this just boggles my mind.

Also XP Service Pack 2 has a firewall turned on by default.

I have seen XP and Win2000 machines become infected within minutes of their firewall being turned off and the user doing nothing more than accessing google.

I use a Windows 98 system which sits behind a hardware firewall and I haven't seen a virus in over three years. I have a Virus scanner but I only use it to do a manual scan once every often.

I must also admit that with a firewall both Win2k and WinXP haven't picked up anything either.

[BenoitRen]

TravisO was talking about the system networking services vulnerabilities. The idea was the safer browser as Firefox will not guarantee safety, as system can be infected through network services.

But your quote also includes him saying that browsing porn sites will get you infected, which IS bulls*** if you use a secure browser. Note that that was the one part I was quoting.

I don't use a resident virus scanner because it is too much of a hog to my taste

Back when I used AVG, I saw no noticeable speed decrease in system operation. Even though my system is a Pentium II 233 Mhz.

[no1none]

This is just a little tale I thought you'd be interested in reading.

I went over to a mates place and he asked me to do a check up on his computer which I set up 1 year ago running Windows 98 SE.

He has a USB modem, ADSL connection, and uses the internet for all sorts of things but really knows little about computers or viruses etc.

I was just going to do a Defrag and some basic file keeping / backups when I noticed he didn't have an Virus Scan software, no software firewall and no ad-ware scanner.

Thank goodness he took my advice in the past and only used Firefox and updated it every time it told him to. He also assured me he Clears all his Private Data at least once a week. Still, I was a little nervous as to what may be lurking on his system.

So I installed and ran Adaware and AVG with the presumption a few nasties would pop up....

Guess what! Not a single item was discovered!!!

Nothing!

12 months of frequent use by a 'novice user' on the internet, emails and online gaming and his system hadn't picked up a virus, trojan, key-logger, backdoor, spyware or ad-ware.

WOW! Windows 98 rocks!

Note:

Windows 98 SE is LESS prone to getting viruses and other nasties than newer Windows version HOWEVER I still strongly recommend Win9x users have an up-to-date web browser and virus scanner as an absolute minimum.

From 2001 untill middle of 2006 I ran Windows 2000 machine without antivirus too (same single installation of W2K from begining).

When I gave it to someone, I installed NOD32 and it didn't found anything either.

Spybot S&D found only some alexa-related single entry (which AFAIR is a standard once Power Tweaks or Web Accessories add-on for IE is installed, I dont remember which one exactly has "related.htm").

Of course being behind well-configured firewall helped a lot

So IMHO its not a big deal LOL all it takes to have crap-free machine is to THINK what youre doing whatever OS youre using...

/edit/

But yeah, IMHO most of people should always have at least good AV on their Windows OS machines, because most of people don't even want to learn basic principles such as "don't click on anything that says YOU HAVE WON..." etc, unfortunately

Edited July 11, 2007 by no1none

[galahs]

I think on NT based machines (NT/2000/XP/Vista) the most important security feature you need is a Firewall and common sense.

On a Win9x machine you can probably just get away with having common sense. (Though I don't recommend that approach)

[erpdude8]

Opera is a great browser, indeed. It's abilities to block unwanted web contents is unmatched, to my knowledge. All I do not like in the Opera 9.21 is the problem with opening links, and the mail client.

unfortunately, Opera browsers can't access certain web sites or can't view them properly. Good thing I have many Gecko-like browsers such as Firefox, Seamonkey and K-Meleon installed on my computers to work around that problem.

[erpdude8]

I think on NT based machines (NT/2000/XP/Vista) the most important security feature you need is a Firewall and common sense.

On a Win9x machine you can probably just get away with having common sense. (Though I don't recommend that approach)

though you're much better off having an AV and Firewall installed on your win98se PC, galahs

especially if you are using a broadband internet connection (cable/DSL/LAN) which is always on and always vulnerable to any security threat, no matter what version of Windows you use

I just make some parts of my antivirus and firewall software load at startup and disable other parts so that performance won't be impacted

Edited July 16, 2007 by erpdude8

[eidenk]

though you're much better off having an AV and Firewall installed on your win98se PC, galahs

especially if you are using a broadband internet connection (cable/DSL/LAN) which is always on and always vulnerable to any security threat, no matter what version of Windows you use

So what are precisely those threats when having a 9x box simply connected to the network on a broadband connection ?

[888]

My NT4 box runs virus-free since April 1998

[BenoitRen]

unfortunately, Opera browsers can't access certain web sites or can't view them properly.

Note that more often than not this is a website-related problem, not an Opera problem. There are still many sites out there that do dumb user agent sniffing, and/or have non-standards compliant code.

[888]

unfortunately, Opera browsers can't access certain web sites or can't view them properly.

Note that more often than not this is a website-related problem, not an Opera problem. There are still many sites out there that do dumb user agent sniffing, and/or have non-standards compliant code.

Thats why they run UA sniffers - its easier to do than to fix stupid non-compliant code on some giant websites

IMHO it all started with Office 2000 and its MS-centric non-standard web-page-cranking-apps (front page or whatever else it was).

MS fault, as (almost) always...