Do you need an antivirus on the PC?

At the beginning of the 90s, when many of us went from here to there with a box of floppy disks, 3,5 inches HD or in your case with a hole to convert the double density ones into HD, to go to our friend's house or cousin to copy the latest news he had, we were always pending take care so that no virus is included in the batch.

In the mid-90s, as the Internet became a common means of file sharing, fear of viruses steadily increased until we have become accustomed to living with viruses, such as derivatives called Trojans, malware, spyware, and other relatives of viruses. If we know how to do it, we can live with them without them affecting us. In this article I explain my X reasons why it is not necessary to have an antivirus on the computer.

Macs have always been characterized, or wrongly assumed, that they are immune to viruses. Fat mistake. Any operating system is susceptible to being attacked by a virus, the only thing that happens with Macs is that at the beginning of the proliferation of computers in the home, the PC has always been the best-selling device, and therefore, the easiest to reach when connected to the internet.

But in recent years, since Steve Jobs came back to rule Apple, thanks to a loan from the CEO of Microsoft At that time, Bill Gates, it must be said, the Cupertino-based company was able to rise from its ashes and little by little it was becoming the giant that it is today. Thanks to this movement, Macs have increasingly become a more common tool in many homes, forcing friends from outside to launch some derivative of viruses, exclusively for this platform.

The arrival of mobile platforms, especially Android, have made the Android mobile platform one of the objects of desire for hackers, and despite the supposed security offered by the official Android application store, Google Play, each time it is more frequent to find an application that it carries a virus, malware, Trojan horse and more.

One of the urban legends that circulated in the 90s and early 2000s, claimed that they were the antivirus manufacturers themselves who were responsible for creating the viruses in order to sell their products, a theory that in recent years has been rejected but has never been denied by any antivirus developer, so perhaps it has never been misguided, although if we take into account that current viruses and derivatives focus on obtaining information from us to sell it to third parties, or block our computer requesting a ransom, ransomware, the scandal could be huge.

Windows 10 offers us Windows Defender for free

While it is true that Microsoft does not claim that Windows Defender is an antivirus in this way, after analyzing all the functions it performs, we can perfectly consider it as such. In fact, some antivirus developers have raised their voices claiming that the release of Windows 10 with Windows Defender included it supposed unfair competition that was affecting their sales.

Windows Defender analyzes our device in real time so that if a malicious file passes through our computer, we will quickly be notified and it will offer us different options to carry out with the file in question. In addition, being integrated into the operating system, the system is not slowed down at any time, something that it happens practically every time we install an antivirus on our PC.

SmartScreen is also our friend in Windows 10

But not only are we protected against any threat with Windows Defender, but Microsoft also makes the SmartScreen filter available to us, a filter that is in charge of verifying the veracity of the applications that we want to install on our computer, so that if you try to perform any change in our system will notify us allowing us to continue with the process or cancel it and delete it directly from our computer. This filter we can deactivate it from the Windows Defender Security Center

Always update apps

Technology has advanced so rapidly in recent years, it is not surprising that most notebook computers have completely dispensed with optical drive readers, since over the Internet and with a USB connection we can install any operating system or application that we want, without having to resort to physical support.

In addition, the Internet has helped applications to be automatically updated when available and downloaded without our being aware of it. It is always recommended to install all updates to the applications and operating systems we use every day, since although aesthetically they do not offer us any improvement, possible bugs have been solved inside as well as improving the performance of the system or application.

Firewall is a great friend to consider

Despite the great utility that Firewall has, for some time now it has been reviled as one of the tools that can allow us to surf the internet and enjoy our PC or Mac in a safe way. Properly configuring a firewall. Either physical or via software we can:

• Avoid unauthorized remote access to our computer.
• Makes online games more secure by filtering out any non-game related information sent.
• It allows us to block content from accessing any type of content that is not recommended due to age or because it is considered immoral.

App Store = 99% Security

With the arrival of Windows 10, the Microsoft application store began to take hold and today we can find a large number of applications to meet the needs of almost all users. All the applications that are available in the Microsoft Store are free of viruses, Trojans, malware and other fauna that surrounds these types of files, so if we only make use of it, we can be almost 99% calm, because 100% sure there is nothing in this life, and less if it is related to computers.

The main software manufacturers offer us through their website access to applications that, for whatever reason, are not available on the Internet with any Microsoft applications. These applications are more secure than those we can find on any other website, but they are not 100% free of malicious software. An example is found in the Transmission software, an application to download torrent files, an application that it was infected by hackers and replaced by the one available for download on their website.

Obviously the developer of Transmission is not Adobe or Microsoft, where this type of problem does not happen. By the way, to avoid future problems, the developer chose to offer its software through GitHub.

Hackers don't care about you, at least not most

Except in cases counted with the fingers of one hand like the one I mentioned above about the Transmission application, and the cases of ransonware, in which our computer is kidnapped and our files encrypted until we pay the corresponding ransom, most hackers tends to focus its attacks on large companies since its main motivation is to steal customer data to be able to sell them later on the Dark Web, or negotiate a price with the company from which they have been stolen. Examples of this type of information robot:

• Uber suffered unauthorized access to its servers in 2016, but until a year later, the company did not report the theft of information, which had affected the almost 60 million registered users, including the personal data of all drivers who work on time complete for the company. The hackers contacted Uber and requested $ 100.000 not to go public with the theft and to have that information removed. The person in charge agreed to the payment but nobody assures us what really happened with that data.
• dropbox It has also been affected by this type of attack and as usual, it was not announced until an internal audit revealed the attack and how all users had been exposed to hacking.
• One of the most striking cases is that of Yahoo, a company that, before being sold from Verizon, suffered several attacks in which all the company's accounts, each and every one of them, an attack that made it lose the little credibility that the company had at the time before being sold for just under $ 4.500 billion.

Know the websites you visit

If the use we usually make of our computer does not go through accessing websites where there are links to download movies or we spend long hours looking for an application to download for free, the use of an antivirus is not justified, since through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, newspaper pages, news blogs you will never be affected by any kind of malicious software.

Check email via web

If we usually receive a lot of emails and in many cases, most may include some type of attachments the best option is to read our emails through the email service provider's website, be it Gmail, Outlook ... all these services offer us great number of filters that are in charge of analyzing the type of files and their content at all times, so that in this way we are calm when accessing, consulting and even downloading them. In addition, these services offer us applications in the cloud that allow us to open the documents that they send us, thus checking if they are really documents or they pretend to be them to try to infect us.

Have I not convinced you? These are the best antivirus

If after all that I have mentioned above, you still think that you need an antivirus, then I leave you a list with the best antivirus that we can currently find on the market.

avast Antivirus

In recent years Avast has been gaining a significant market share thanks to the good operation and the few resources it needs to function properly.

AVG Antivirus

Although it is part of Avast, at the moment it works independently. AVG offers us protection against viruses, malware and spyware on all platforms on the market, except iOS.

Panda Antivirus

Panda's monthly subscription system allows us to have all our devices protected at all times, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In Actualidad Gadget We have an article dedicated to best free antivirus for both PC and Mac, in case you want to expand the number of options that you can currently find on the market.