Surviving without added malware protection

[Stevekir]

My daughter bought a laptop over 5 years ago and is still running Windows 7. She has no added AV software and has never updated the OS. She doesn't know whether Windows Defender Admittedly, she doesn't use it much, but a few of my friends are the same and use their machines every day.

What is opinion on this forum on how she and they have escaped malware for such a long time while so many other people (here and elsewhere) strongly advise quite strong additional protection?

 

[Tim Locke]

Your daughters machine is probably running Windows Security Essentials or whatever it was called...the precursor to Defender. Like Defender it quietly updates its virus signatures at least once a day.

She probably doesn't surf dubious web sites and click on every download...possibly she downloads nothing except Windows updates, Amazon books and other reliable stuff.

I bet that her ISP has a spam filter at least as good as Gmail...I never get spam from Gmail but I get 2-3 a day from my ISP ( Rogers Cable, a very large ISP in Canada, at least 1,000,000 customers)

She probably doesn't open email attachments from people she doesn't know and is aware that her bank, cc company, Paypal etc will NEVER ask for any personal details by email.


In other words, she is conversant with Safe Internet Use even if she doesn't know it.


One hopes that she does allow Windows update so she gets the security updates.

 

[Norton]

She is a smart surfer and with Win 7 would have been running (MSE) Microsoft Security Essentials.

 

[Stevekir]

Yes. I have checked.

 

[Norton]

Yes. I have checked.

Steve You taught her well.