This is a rant about the uselessness of anti-virus programs. My argument is that having one installed is no different to not having one installed.

Anti-virus programs serve one purpose and one purpose only, to prevent viruses from entering your computer. But in order to do that you have to be regularly updated and you also have to trust the anti-virus program in distinguishing viruses from genuine applications. AVG has been notorious for crippling machines by deleting critical system files. Once a host is infected with a virus the anti-virus program becomes useless. It alerts you that you have a virus but is unable to eradicate it. In fact, eradicating viruses from a computer takes more effort than reformatting. It can take up to 3 hours to format a computer and bring it to it’s original state (assuming you have all the necessary tools available) but it can take days of research in getting rid of a particular virus.

I mentioned in my first point that you must be up-to-date before they serve any real purpose. The problem with the cat and mouse game is that the mouse will always be one step ahead. It doesn’t matter how great your detection rates are, it’s only takes that 1% of viruses that’s not detected to compromise your computer. And it’s only that 1% that’s out there, for the other 99% of viruses that can be detected don’t even exist in the wild. When was the last time you heard anybody being infected by the “blaster worm virus”? So if you’re only capable of being infected by that 1% of viruses out there what’s the point of having anti-virus? You’ll be infected nevertheless.

So what do you do when you are infected? The anti-virus program usually screams at you that you have a virus, it asks whether or not you want to “fix” the problem. You select “Fix it” and nothing happens. 5 seconds later the same dialogue box appears. There exists online support forums that try and help you fix your problem but the turnover rates are usually 72 hours. Big companies invest millions of dollars into anti-virus protection but whether or not do anything is another issue. At CISCO they use McAffe. I used to get a lot more complaints about system slowdowns and what not than I get about virus issues. The productivity lost due to slow pc performance would probably outweigh productivity lost due to virus infections. When a user is infected by a virus, usually it goes to the onsite support team in which they conduct a laptop refresh. Like I said, it’s easier formatting than it is removing viruses.

If you have any opposing arguments as to why anti-virus programs are useful, I would love to hear them.