Just stick with Windows' built-in security. Only download from trusted pirate sites.
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
63 points (93.2% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35873 readers
2069 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
FMHY has a pretty good Wiki for that kind of thing
Thanks a lot for the tip! i found the site and looks extremely useful
Thanks! Default settings or there is something i need to configure?
After setting up the PC, search “defender” in the toolbar and poke around a little bit. The security settings are very intuitive, so I’m sure you can modify things to your liking.
And use VirusTotal when in doubt.
Exactly the same as what I did (I think it was called Microsoft Security Essentials); things are a lot more locked-down these days, never had a virus or issue in many many years (then moved back to Apple).
Windows defender is fine if you use a good adblocker and learn what is or isn't a safe download.
That's what I had to resort to after ESET kept forcing update my cracked antivirus...
Use Common Sense™ brand antivirus. Pirated files like movies and songs are mostly ok except for executables. Those must be sourced from trusted sites. Pirating has its risks and if possible do it on another machine not used for work. Antivirus will almost always flag crackers and keygens anyways.
I thought the same time ago and ended with a bunch of RAR files infected. I still don't know what caused it.
Common sense is good, but have at least Windows Defender.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet - have a good backup solution. If there isn't anything on your computer that can't be restored, then you're not going to feel as much pressure to protect things.
Of course there's crypto miners, identity theft, botnet stuff, all sorts of things that run undetected and don't simply render your computer unusable. But if you're absolutely sure you're not losing anything, then "nuke it from orbit" becomes a more paletteable solution for virus removal. A hassle for sure, but format and start over again becomes an option that results in no loss other than the pain of having to reinstall everything.
To add to this, if you have the storage then a solution like Macrium Reflect (or a FOSS alternative) is a great option too. I let my PC back itself up every morning before I wake up, then if something happens to it (virus, broken driver, bad install, etc.), I can just revert it to the state it was in earlier that morning using a recovery drive.
Windows Defender has also gotten pretty good over the past couple years - features like controlled folder access will protect sensitive data from ransomware (I just use it on my backup folder). The combination of the two has been plenty for me to deal with viruses or broken programs - I haven't had to run a clean install of Windows in 4 years.
if you're doing frequent backups, make very sure to have multiple copies of backups. You get a virus into your backups, that does no good if it's your only back up.
Good point - I usually keep two weeks of daily backups just in case
Just Windows Defender is fine. I also use Malware Bytes but only since I have a lifetime license, otherwise I would just use Defender
Just the basic Windows Defender is a surprisingly robust AV. Default configuration is fine.
An adblocker in your browser, and using only known sites to download stuff.
Better yet - if you can, use winget to download software
That's doesn't help when pirating tho
Gonna quote myself from an earlier comment I made:
On Windows, just use the built-in Windows Defender. On Linux, I recommend ClamAV + ClamTK. On Android, Hypatia.
If you think you have malware, this is a pretty good guide to remove it.
I'd also strongly recommend using and configuring a content blocker like uBlock Origin in your browser, as well as using a DNS level blocker like NextDNS.
If you have a multilayered setup like this, then I think you're pretty good and it'll be not impossible, but much harder to get malware or be infected. Just use common sense as always.
Windows defender is the best you can get at a reasonable price. But nothing is perfect, so don’t test fate.
I've used ESET NOD32 for a long time. It costs money, but it's relatively light weight, doesn't get in the way of any of the gaming or video editing or programming work I do, and it has smacked my hand a few times clicking on risky links, blocking a few downloads (one or two, ever) and often blocking scam websites that attempt to run javascript crypto miners. Your experience may vary if you're planning on using "rescued" media or applications. I don't have have the full internet/devices subscription, just the one for personal computers that does the actual virus detection.
I use Webroot because it uses minimal system resources, and it scores highly as an antivirus. But it requires an annual subscription, so if that is a turn-off to anybody, then I'd just recommend the standard Windows Defender.
Using emsisoft on 500 systems, works great.
I’m thinking on get a couple of pirated files, so i’d like to be as secure as possible.
These are mutually exclusive.
It is possible to take risks while reducing the possibility of a bad outcome or mitigating the consequences of said outcome
So they are not mutually exclusive then
that's right
Aside from other recommendations, not installing the latest stuff and waiting a couple of days or longer can help, since open source projects have sometimes been infected too. Especially if it's pirated files.