From: Shadow 

On Tue, 30 Oct 2018 10:16:42 -0500, maxe@who.cares.com wrote:

>I've had it with the pricing and constant intrusion of the newer 
>AV products.  They've become as bad as the old style firewalls that
>were always blocking something or asking questions about every
>keystroke.  I'm thinking of not having any of them on my computer.
>I'm also thinking that if something goes south with my box because
>of some malware or other that Acronis True Image will save me by
>allowing me to load a previous healthy image of my C:

	Yes, it would.
>
>My question is about what are my chances of acquiring a virus or
>some other malware that would lock up my box so that even my Acronis
>Rescue Disk could not load? 

	Minimal, unless it's some government-sponsored designer
malware built into the hardware. You will be booting a different OS
(usually Linux) from an independent media, so a rootkit should not be
a problem.

> Yes, I know such bad stuff is most
>probably out there, but what are my chances of getting stuck with
>such a vicious piece of malware?  I operate rather safely.  I
>haven't had a virus warning for quite a few years from the AV
>programs I've been using.

	Just scan your system every now and then with a USB or CD
booted AV rescue disk. Download and burn it on a trusted PC. Pull the
internet connection before you boot it.
	Practice safe hex. Don't allow javascript for every site, and
remove Flash and Java from your browser. Don't click on email, Usenet
etc attachments or unknown executable files without  submitting their
hashes to Virustotal or Jotti. 
	Even then a waiting a few days is good, so you won't get a
zero-day.
	[]'s
-- 
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy  - Google 2012
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