57 Can I avoid viruses by avoiding shareware, free software or games?
Description
This article is from the Computer Viruses FAQ, by Nick FitzGerald n.fitzgerald@csc.canterbury.ac.nz with numerous contributions by others.
57 Can I avoid viruses by avoiding shareware, free software or games?
No. There are many documented instances in which even commercial
"shrink wrapped" software was inadvertently distributed containing
viruses. Avoiding shareware, freeware, games, etc, only isolates you
from a vast collection of software (some of it very good, some of it
very bad, most of it somewhere in between...).
The important thing is not to avoid a certain type of software, but to
be cautious of *any and all* newly acquired software and diskettes.
Merely scanning all new software media for known viruses would be rather
effective at preventing virus infections, especially when combined with
some other prevention/detection strategy such as integrity management of
programs.
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