"Anti virus" is an oximoron
AV has all the hallmarks of a virus except one: it is installed on purpose by the (misguided) user.
AV is software that:
- Comandeers full control of your computer
- Keeps updating ever-growing black-lists (the opposite of a sane "allow only what's known and kosher" security policy)
- Keeps increasing CPU usage
- Keeps taking more and more memory
- Inerjects itself into the system call path, making your programs slower, and sometimes breaks them completely (e.g. cygwin)
- phones home for regular updates
Why are people still falling for this scam?