Malware as used here is anything in your machine, either doing bad things to your machine and or your privacy, without you knowing it, or which uses your machine as an illicit terminal hub to communicate with other machines you know nothing about.
You can indeed be sued if it can be shown you knew or should have known something was wrong on your machine, but you allowed it anyway to launch an attack on someone else's machine. If malware is using your machine to store forbidden things, such as child rape videos, the burden in court of proving you had no knowledge of it's presence in the machine may be on you.
Cell phones (and even printers) can also have malware of different types placed on them. Ranging from simple reporters that send copies of all of your texts and phone calls to another phone, to malicous programs that call 911 from your phone every few seconds, to password capture programs that wait for you to do a credit card transaction or check a bank account.
Many new forms of malware are invented and placed on the Internet or sent out in emails every day. This is why constant updating your anti malware database is important. Also important are periodic scans as the database of what the newer malwares are changes.
Some computers and phones come with anti malware programs pre-installed. Sometimes these are actually good programs, but they require updating and periodic scans to work. Skip either one and you may have big problems.
Some pre-installed anti malware programs are themselves malicious and the responsibility for knowing which ones are good and which ones are bad is yours.
Some anti malware programs specialize and only look for one type of malware, such as spyware or tracking cookies.
Others are so generic, that while they capture or intercept much, they miss much too.
No one program will catch every possible type of malware.
You can spend money on a subscription for a protection system for your machine, but you should know some very good stuff is out there for free.
100% FREE Programs I like and use often.. Malwarebytes, Free AVG, Free Super Antispyware, TDSSKiller, Windows Defender, McAfee free online scan, CCleaner. That's not a complete list, but you get the idea.
Please stay safe. No one is unreachable as some think. If you don't do this already, need to scan entire pc at least 1 time a week. Inbetween should check for malware, trojans etc. every few days. Make sure your programs also scan only files,and other settings. Many are free. Don't go to links you are not sure are safe. Don't open mail that looks like a familiar person or place but the address is off by 1 letter or number, etc.. When I was new to pc, joined this site (1st site!) and this was told to me. Take it or leave it.
Well one of the important things to note is different anti-malware programs look for different things, AND they have different techniques of search. What this means is sometimes a good program will miss finding a malware (or a key part of a malware) but another program may find it.
We also need to separate out the fact that not all anti virus programs will pick up on rootkits or spyware. Some of them will pick up some indicators of rootkits and spyware, but not all of them. The reverse is true. A program designed primarily to detect and kill spyware, such as Windows Defender, sometimes misses rootkits or virus indicators.
You should only have one anti-virus program running in your systems memory at a time. If you try to have two doing the same task at the same time they can conflict with each other, or spend their days alerting to each others databases of virus identification codes.
Free AVG picks up viruses, but as recently as today I had it miss a Trojan, and I have seen it slide by some spywares. Alternatively Super Anti-spyware (SAS) picks up most spyware but misses some Trojans and some viruses. I use both. Run one after the other. It isn't unusual for one to pick up an indicator of something the other one missed. The question of which one is run first isn't important. The point is they use different search techniques and since each companies product is proprietary they use different databases for reference.
TDSSKiller (which is free) excels at finding hidden root kits.
I have had mixed results with McAfee online scan. Last week I de-bugged a friend's Windows 7 laptop which was supposedly protected against viruses with a paid Symantec account. Mcafee said it was clean too. However the laptop refused to update Windows and had last done so in 2013. Twice in recent weeks the owner had experienced the blue screen of death. The error codes from Windows Update translated to probable Malware. TDSSKiller found a hidden rootkit (and killed it) about 6 Gigabytes in size. It was learned the Norton had been corrupted by the Malware and therefore saw nothing wrong in the machine. SAS found (and removed) numerous pieces of spyware. Then after reboot only then did the machine start accepting Windows Update. MS Anti-Malware progam then found and killed another malware (later identified as a key-logger type). Uninstalling the Norton I installed free AVG 2015 after a reboot and it quickly found more viruses (and quarantined/killed them). Rebooted CCleaner erased the un ubbeded files and took out many registry errors the malware had caused. AVG was deleted and ReImage (a paid program) restored the 7 registry to factory specs. Again MS Update was run and about 300 important updates were made without problem. Rebooted again Norton Symantec was reinstalled. Then it updated and a defrag of the cleaned hard drive was done as well as another scan. Then a scandisk with no more problems found. The machine was returned to the owner and she reports it works perfectly.
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What are your favorite anit-malware programs?(Vote Below)
You can indeed be sued if it can be shown you knew or should have known something was wrong on your machine, but you allowed it anyway to launch an attack on someone else's machine. If malware is using your machine to store forbidden things, such as child rape videos, the burden in court of proving you had no knowledge of it's presence in the machine may be on you.
Cell phones (and even printers) can also have malware of different types placed on them. Ranging from simple reporters that send copies of all of your texts and phone calls to another phone, to malicous programs that call 911 from your phone every few seconds, to password capture programs that wait for you to do a credit card transaction or check a bank account.
Many new forms of malware are invented and placed on the Internet or sent out in emails every day. This is why constant updating your anti malware database is important. Also important are periodic scans as the database of what the newer malwares are changes.
Some computers and phones come with anti malware programs pre-installed. Sometimes these are actually good programs, but they require updating and periodic scans to work. Skip either one and you may have big problems.
Some pre-installed anti malware programs are themselves malicious and the responsibility for knowing which ones are good and which ones are bad is yours.
Some anti malware programs specialize and only look for one type of malware, such as spyware or tracking cookies.
Others are so generic, that while they capture or intercept much, they miss much too.
No one program will catch every possible type of malware.
You can spend money on a subscription for a protection system for your machine, but you should know some very good stuff is out there for free.
100% FREE Programs I like and use often.. Malwarebytes, Free AVG, Free Super Antispyware, TDSSKiller, Windows Defender, McAfee free online scan, CCleaner. That's not a complete list, but you get the idea.
What programs do you use?