Antivirus Software Has Been #1 at Download.com for Years

Today I realized that the number one most downloaded software on download.com has been some form of antivirus software for at least 6 years that I can remember off the top of my head. Antivirus downloads apparently account for somewhere around 150 million downloads every year from download.com alone. And that's just for the popular ones. Over the last 6 years that's nearly a billion downloads for antivirus software.

If antivirus software was doing what it is intended to do, shouldn't that number be going down by now, rather than staying constant for the better part of a decade ?

Anti Virus software success is limited for one simple reason, time.

If a virus is released today, it could take the AV company a week to add it's signature to it's dat files & many systems might be infected by then.

Look at all the Hijack This logs posted here. Almost all of them show an AV program running at the same time as the virus.

That's cause people don't know which antivirus is the best!
some of them block the computer while scannig and others don't even detect the virus !
So there is a pretty good reaseon people to test different Anti-Viruses!
I had Kaspersky worked fine until the tril was over and my computer slowed down.
Then I had Avira this one didn't detected all the viruses cause when i installed Avast detected 25 viruses.
Now i have installed Avast that has license key until 2064.

Even the best can't keep up with the flow of viruses. I refuse to have AV software on any of my machines.

It's true that they make your computer worse but still it's best to have one

It's not best to have one. I lock my registry. Viruses have to make registry changes to run. If they can't change the registry, how can they run?

how do you lock the registry??

I use MJ Registry Watcher

http://www.jacobsm.com/mjsoft.htm

I mean they slow down the computer but if you have one it's safer anyway!

I must just be so awesome that virus writers have me on their do-not-infect lists or something. I just don't experience any of the problems I see people having on a daily basis. I haven't for years now. All I've done was follow the common sense advice I read on Ozzu when I got here years ago.

Also, I haven't used a torrent/file-sharing program in years either. I think that keeping file-sharing applications off computers might actually be a more effective form of virus control than antivirus software is.

I don't know about it but are you sure viruses and other malware can't run without changing the registry?

Limewire was just in the news recently. I believe they lost some legal matter and are suppose to shutdown. When I did PC repair the majority of jobs that had a PC mangled beyond belief all had file share applications installed. Typically, a weather application and some browser toolbar could also be found. So, joebert is right on there. Also, I don't run any AV on any of my machines being that AV programs can't delete the virus cause the virus is usually running. If AV programs could suspend all tasks and then run they could probably do better, but I'm still concerned with the amount of computer resources they use. I've never locked my registry but it makes sense, but I agree with running without and AV. Better surfing and installing practices are really fool-proof. No problems here in years. However, with Microsoft's new UAC you'd think that would start helping. Linux has had it right for years. I guess MS just assumed people would create a limited user account, but the XP installer auto sets you up so go figure. Of course, it's in the AV manufacturer's best interest to keep people frightened of viruses. My answer is NO they're not doing what they're suppose to. People with them are not any safer and in fact think about malware and viruses targeted at the AV itself.

Have you heard of Perfect Optimizer - is it any good?

I asked on 29th October about Perfect Optimizer.
Well I did buy it - now I have uninstalled (see below) + more

Any time I ran it I would be told of all these errors PO had
saved me from, however IT NEVER SOLVED MY PROBLEMS.
It seems that if I put it on any computer I might get the same results so after about 6 or 7 emails to their support (with no technical success) I uninstalled.

I completely reformatted by hard drive and fully re-installed.
I noted ... some programs seemed insistant that I MUST INSTAL an anti-virus program (of any sort). I kept saying NO INSTAL (but I am not experienced to know about the LOCK REGISTRY [see previous users comments above] {actually all my problems were Registry related}.

Anyway - I did make a wonderful discovery.
MICROSOFT DO HAVE THEIR OWN (UNADVERTISED) ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAM
and it is FREE and available from MICROSOFT . COM (search by name).

Admin - please check and approve - should be put in as correct url so people know it is real Microsoft owned url
It is called MICROSOFT SECURITY ESSENTIALS - is very similar to other AV programs in operations - and VERY FAST to detect problems.

I have inserted several USB sticks and it was very fast to tell me there is a problem.
Have used it for about a month now and very happy with results.

Now (with absolutely no other AV programs on my computer) I get reminders from time to time - that I have no AV installed.
After a few reminders these messages disappear for about a week then reappear for a few days then disappear again.

Microsoft Security Essentials have a choice of manual or auto to get updates (which I like to control - for when I am not busy on the CPU) and updates seems to be available every second day.
It is possible to select which drive(s) is/are scanned.