Anti-Virus Programs Suck
Mar. 3rd, 2003 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aI just had an anti-virus program that runs (ran) on my machine spontaneously decide to shut down one of my mailboxes my making it readonly, because someone had mailed me a virus.
Not like that ever happens on today's Internet.
And not like the virus was actually dangerous to me, because it preyed on the many security holes present in Microsoft's Outlook Express, a program I refuse to run not just because it's put out by the evil empire, but also because it's so poorly written that it develops major new security problems on a monthly basis.
But, despite that my anti-virus program decided to mark my INBOX as read-only, totally screwing my mail program and causing me to spend a solid half-an-hour to put things back the way they're supposed to be, so that I could work again.
I abhor computer programs which do traumatic things for you without giving you any options to halt them, because the computer program knows better.
I also hate solutions that are worse than the problem, and cause inconvenience to hundreds, thousands, or millions of people because of a specific small problem that's appeared on occasion.
Anti-virus programs generally meet both definitions.
Not like that ever happens on today's Internet.
And not like the virus was actually dangerous to me, because it preyed on the many security holes present in Microsoft's Outlook Express, a program I refuse to run not just because it's put out by the evil empire, but also because it's so poorly written that it develops major new security problems on a monthly basis.
But, despite that my anti-virus program decided to mark my INBOX as read-only, totally screwing my mail program and causing me to spend a solid half-an-hour to put things back the way they're supposed to be, so that I could work again.
I abhor computer programs which do traumatic things for you without giving you any options to halt them, because the computer program knows better.
I also hate solutions that are worse than the problem, and cause inconvenience to hundreds, thousands, or millions of people because of a specific small problem that's appeared on occasion.
Anti-virus programs generally meet both definitions.
