On Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:35:05 -0700, Tony wrote:
Seth Goodman wrote:
Another two cents - most AV suites have free trials - *definitely* try
before you buy!
Other than whether or not you like the user interface, how do you know
if it is doing a good job -- or doing anything?
There is a webpage where you can dl a harmless file that looks to
antivirus programs like a virus. Now if only I remembered it's name.
Read all of this before acting.
Google is my friend. It's eicar.xxx It seems to be available at
http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm This is hard to see
on my computer, because I have to scroll to the right a little bit to
see the scroll bar INSIDE the pane, and then scroll down.
This might be a better link.
http://www.rexswain.com/eicar.html I was
very timid about these files because How do I know this isn't a trick
to get me to dl viruses!!
A few years ago I used them and everything was fine, and my AV alerted
on each one. Now for some reason, I'm not getting any alerts!!! OK,
after a couple minutes, I got the alerts. I don't know why it took so
long. I'm using an 800MHz computer now, probably faster than the
first time I tried this. Anyhow, I think both pages are ok.
The file lengths are probably important
eicar.com 68 Bytes
eicar.com.txt 68 Bytes
eicar_com.zip 184 Bytes
eicarcom2.zip 308 Bytes
As long as they are this short, there's no room for actual virus
stuff, just this string that all AV programs list as virus-like.
-- end read all of this --
I eliminate most viruses from email by skipping emails longer than
40K. Maybe this doesn't work so well with all email programs, but with
Eudora, I can look at the subject and headers of emails longer than
40K and decide if I want to dl the rest of them. Usually the answer
is no, except for one newsletter I get, and one poster to a mailing
list who uses some sort of software that makes all his emails 10 times
as large as everyone else's.
Neither Norton nor AVG has ever alerted on a web-based virus, and I'm
still not sure where they are and what they're like if they exist at
all.