The Lagoon TechMy little blog in Cyberspace.

Pretty much everyone who has used a computer knows what anti-virus software is and what is does. In case you don’t know, anti-virus software basically gives you the potential to know if malware is trying, has tried, or maybe even has successfully infiltrated your computer system.

More and more people are starting to do away with anti-virus software because “they don’t need it”. Well I personally see anti-virus software as a tool…a tool that helps secure a computer system. When someone says that they “don’t need anti-virus software”, I think of the example that I gave to someone a while back on the Internet :

Let’s say you go around telling people that you don’t need to see a doctor to test for cancer, because you do not have cancer, nor will you ever get any. How do you have the potential to know that you do not have cancer, *if* you are not checked by a doctor? How do you know that you will *never* get *any* cancer at all? You don’t!

Your logic would not make sense in that situation because you are assuming something as fact, when *in fact* you are just guessing! The same applies to someone who says that they “don’t need anti-virus software” because they “know that they won’t get any malware” on their computer system or “I know that I am careful, hence I don’t need anti-virus software”. Sorry people but that logic just doesn’t add up!

Also it seems in my experience that many Linux users believe the idea that they won’t get any malware on their Linux systems, or at the very least they “don’t need an anti-virus” program running on their Linux system.

Like I have asked several times before, how can you have the potential to know if you have malware on your Linux system, if you do not run anti-virus software on your Linux desktop / server?

You are just guessing that you will not get any malware. You are even guessing when you say that you do not have malware currently on your Linux system!

Sure Linux has a lot less malware than Windows, but that is no excuse for ignoring security! 🙂

Also, I know that anti-virus software can have (and does have) security problems in of itself. However keep in mind that the companies that write the anti-virus software do update their software to fix security problems, so this is not necessarily a big deal (depends upon your situation).