Before I answer this ques­tion, I would like to divulge that I used to work for Net­work Asso­ciates from 97 to 03 (Now McAfee). I was a Tech­ni­cal Sup­port Tech­ni­cian, then pro­moted to a Tech Lead, then Global Sup­port Engineer.

That being said, my past con­nec­tion to McAfee has noth­ing to do with my opin­ions on anti-virus prod­ucts. It has more to do with how all anti-virus prod­ucts work in gen­eral. I’m also pretty sure that McAfee and the entire Anti-Virus indus­try does not share my views.

Back on topic.

Are anti-virus prod­ucts worth it?

NO. My answer to this ques­tion is no. It is not worth it to use anti-virus products.

Anti-virus prod­ucts are reac­tive. Mean­ing, a virus had to be cre­ated first before an anti-virus com­pany can cre­ate a “vac­cine” for it. This is why you need to keep updat­ing your anti-virus software.

On top of that, anti-virus soft­ware are always active in the back­ground. This takes up valu­able com­puter resources, mak­ing your PC slower, for some­thing that is only “reac­tive.” And since it’s always run­ning in the back­ground, it also has a poten­tial to con­flict with other programs.

So no, IMO it’s not worth it. Anti-virus prod­ucts are ask­ing too much giv­ing way too lit­tle. There is still no sub­sti­tute for com­mon sense and safe com­put­ing habits. Don’t go to free porn sites, don’t open attach­ments from peo­ple you don’t know, etc., etc.

Basi­cally, what I’m say­ing is, backup your data reg­u­larly, watch where you go, watch what you click and you’ll be just fine.

How­ever, if you get anti-virus prod­ucts for free, maybe from you ISP or some­where else, then by all means, please use it. Com­put­ers nowa­days are fast enough to han­dle the extra load that anti-virus prod­ucts puts on your PC with­out sweat­ing. And most of all it’s FREE!

It is also impor­tant to note that my intended audi­ence for this post are home users and small busi­ness own­ers. For cor­po­rate envi­ron­ment, where there are many users, it is very hard to reg­u­late user com­put­ing habits. It is imper­a­tive that com­pa­nies deploy anti-virus products.