Do you need antivirus software to participate in the seas?
Im always scaredd, but my antivirus software is expiring tomorrow and i wanted to know!
Don’t pay for Windows antivirus apps. It comes with it’s own.
None of it is any better than Defender. When Defender came on the scene, every enterprise I’ve worked in stopped buying AV licenses - they have that little value.
Video and audio are unlikely to contain a virus that Defender wouldn’t catch (say an executable renamed as an mp3) which just wouldn’t launch anyway.
The one thing you can do to improve your security is to stop running as admin on Windows (which the first user account is by default and necessity). Create a user account just for doing this stuff - a regular user account, which means it can’t make changes to the system itself.
Even better is to test anything suspicious in a VM.
Using Linux for this is the best approach all around. Get an old laptop, run Linux. Most tools are developed for Linux first anyway.
If you’re downloading video or audio files the risk of malware and viruses is pretty low. Usually the worst thing you’ll find is intentionally sabotaged files that have audio or visual glitches. It’s very hard to create malicious media files because they are viewed by other programs and not executed directly. There is a trick they use sometimes where they will try to trick someone by naming a file “popular song.flac.exe” just check the file extensions before opening them and open them from your media player rather than double clicking the file and you’ll be fine.
The real danger is programs. Any executable file could be dangerous, which includes things like roms too. I personally won’t go near executables because the risk is so high. Having an anti-virus software helps, but some of them like Norton and McAfee are hot garbage that don’t work as advertised. Strangely Micro$oft’s Bitdefender is really good though and free. There is a paid version but if you practice the opsec some of the other posters suggested, you should be fine.
My rules that haven’t led me astray yet:
- Use Linux
- Use Firefox with uBlock Origin with all/most of the built-in block lists enabled
- Stick to reputable sources listed on FMHY and the r/piracy megathread
- Prefer open source emulators and source ports for gaming
- Have an automatic backup system that does off-site backups
- Use network-wide or system-wide host blocking using custom DNS servers for your router or operating system (such as Pi-hole or NextDNS) with aggressive block lists
+1 👆
Also, opsec/habits/mindset/basic sense of cyber hygiene, whatever you want to call it, regardless of what tools and equipment you use: https://ssd.eff.org/module/how-avoid-phishing-attacks
Deep dive here.
I have been on Linux since 2019 and haven’t used an antivirus software since.
I do have clamav installed just to be safe, but it hasn’t found anything in a good , and even when it did, it was always a false positive.
Even if your antivirus expires, you’ll still have Windows defender, which is at least as good, if not better, than whatever antivirus you’re already using.
Also, as long as you’re smart about what you download and open on your computer, you’ll be fine
didn’t m$ recently screw up windows defender?
I mean I assume most of us use Linux, but there can still be malware and viruses. Just gotta be careful. I stay away from most games since those are ripe for malware. Video and audio ive never had an issue
You don’t need an antivirus on linux.
and even if you stay on
you shouldn’t be paying for av, the built in defender is just as adequate as any of the paid stuff.You still have to be careful on Linux. Some windows malware can run on Wine. Don’t open any .exe, .com, .bat, .lnk or .reg files.
Watch out for files with two extensions. Some_movie.mkv.exe is guaranteed to be malware. That’s done to trick windows users since the file extension is hidden by default for some stupid reason.
