Why Using Multiple Antivirus Programs is a Bad Idea?
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You could be running more than one Antivirus and probably you think it is the right thing or that you are fully protected. It is not recommended because it has adverse effects on your pc. Having looked through a couple of computers withing Makerere, you find a user having up to atmost 5 or atleast 2 antiviruses. Here are some of the reasons why it is dangerous. Dicts recommends that your run sophos that is the licensed version or the free open source antiviruses like Microsoft Essentials.
- They will try to kill each other. Because antivirus programs search your system for programs that are monitoring and sending information about your system, a competing antivirus program that is monitoring and sending information about your system tends to look like a virus, so it will attempt to block it and remove it.A competing antivirus program that is monitoring and sending information about your system tends to look like a virus.
- They will fight over viruses. When an antivirus program encounters a virus, it removes it and quarantines it. But if a competing antivirus program sees that quarantined file and wants to remove and quarantine it in accordance with its own objectives, then it will repeatedly send reports and notifications about this virus that it is detecting, even though it is no longer actually a threat to your system. If you don’t want to continually get bogus warning messages, this will be a problem for you.
- They will sap your power. Antivirus programs use a lot of your system memory to conduct system scans and other related operations. If you have two of these operating simultaneously, your system’s effectiveness can be greatly diminished or completely wiped out altogether, and without any benefit, since the two are performing redundant operations.
When it comes to protecting your computer, more protection is not better. Take some time to do the research and choose one comprehensive antivirus suite that has been independently tested to combat the latest known malware programs and that will singlehandedly arm your system to the teeth to protect it against every type of threat.
What we could term is more protection is, to follow best practices like:-
- Making sure your computer receives security updates, make sure the automatic update is turned on or check through windows update and allow it to tell you when updates are ready so that you should be able to download and install.
- Avoid putting flash disks from any computer or network without first scanning it for viruses (But your computer must be virus protected and also antivirus up to date). Most flashes come from cafes around wandegeya or any location whose computers aren't protected with licenced antiviruses and these has been one of the biggest threats to computers in the Mak community.
- Always be keen of any suspicious behaviour, avoid opening email attachments from unclear sources.
- Make sure your firewall is enabled - this is vital, you can know who is trying to access your computer
- Always contact us using the helpme@dicts.mak.ac.ug email address, we will get to you and help you out.
For more information read these articles - see links