Is Antivirus Useful, and How Do You Safeguard Your Device?

Whether you are dealing with people or machines, viruses can seem like a real threat. Because of that, the antivirus industry, for both people and machines, is big business. Concentrating on antivirus for machines and devices, this week we asked our writers if they found antivirus software useful and how they safeguarded their devices.

Our Opinions
All in all, our writers mostly agree. No one seems to use it very regularly. Miguel sees antivirus software as “something that gives a slightly false sense of security.” He explains that “viruses have grown in sophistication and are often not easily removed by standard antivirus software.” As for safeguarding, he replied that he does so “with my own prudence.”

Vamsi doesn’t use any antivirus on his Windows PC other than the default one that is provided by Microsoft. Yet, he does use Comodo Firewall as “it makes it easy to configure different firewall rules and even alerts me when a program is trying to connect to the Internet.” As for his phone, he doesn’t use any antivirus as “they do nothing for me other than consuming all the memory.”

That seems to be a popular opinion. Damien says he doesn’t use any antivirus solution for either his phone or computer because “I don’t find them useful at all and they consume plenty of memory and resources.” Trevor agrees, saying when he has tried several different antivirus tools, they slowed down his phone.

Derrik explains that antivirus tools “are basically blacklists. They often don’t search for active threats. Often times users get scared into installing these tools even though they aren’t really that useful.” He doesn’t use them on any of the platforms he is on as he doesn’t “believe that they serve a purpose by constantly being there.” If he does happen to get a virus, he uses an antivirus tool to remove the threat, then uninstalls it.

Because I’m an Apple person and viruses were not much of a threat for a very long time, it’s not something I consider. Macs are open to malware, but it was just never much of a concern of mine. Now dealing mostly with iOS, it’s still not a large concern of mine.

Your Opinion
Do you agree with our writers? Or do you use antivirus software fearing that there is a huge threat out there? What other ways do you safeguard your devices? Did our writers’ opinions change your mind at all? Let us know in the comments below.