Isn't it ironic, the software people installing/trust not secures the OS by itself in any aspect it set something (like hips,..) in top of it, overall it not evolved because I not know any of AV's which really secures the OS by changing important settings (secpol/gpedit) or minimum inform people how to do this and suggest some settings to really harden the OS. In my experience knowledge is everything if you know how to deal with it you know how to protect against xyz malware. The best strategy would be to inform people directly within the AV about upcoming threads + show examples and as mentioned different configurations. This could be very easy done and is much more effective as e.g. any 'on-top' protection. Another point is trust, you simply need to trust just another company which may want your files/checksums to submit this to an cloud based reputation system. The entire traffic mostly will be inspected for possible MITM and and and, most people not realize that and think that this is okay, in fact you're doing work and you need to pay (in most cases) for this - this is crazy. Also remember that the OS (newer ones) also comes pre-installed with an AV which is mostly enough, it's not perfect sure but for normal user it's okay. But again I think the biggest weapon against such threads are knowledge, if people would know more about the background they would't become such a big target. But's a bit philosophy because some say the OS should automatically do all this, I think it's not possible as long an user behind can change settings but on the other side you need to know a little bit about xyz to harden it and then you need to 'waste' time to deal with all this.
Well yeah. The best thing to do is know what you're doing on the computer and avoid fishy sites as Murphy78 says and from fishy software. I DO see value in AV software for my grandmother though, she's more likely to get crap on her computer and it helps clean it up when she does (versus my having to reformat, reinstall, and reconfigure. One thing that I always find funny is when people install bootleg Anti-virus software on their computer. Who the heck would want security software whose security has already been compromised?
Security, in this case, may not have been compromised - but the manner in which to find a valid SN or reset to testing period or.... is...
Yeah, true, but I meant more along the lines of when people buy cracked bootleg software outside the subway and stuff (I am currently living in Mexico City where such occurrences are very common), in which case it is normally not a workaround but a crack/hack since the people buying it don't know enough about computers to find online sources and workarounds.
Despite all that has been said againat AV's, my AVIRA still occasionally detects malicious stuff I try to download and eliminates it before I do so. Furthermore, I've managed to stay clean of malware (touch wood) for years, despite being a messy surfer. I also notice that 2 1/2 years after being declared obsolete, AVs are still around and widely used. So my AV stays where it is, till the dust settles down as to what is fact and what is commercial interest.