Ask the Experts: Do I Need Antivirus Software?

Martha tapped a note out to us today that asked,

I'm 73 years old. My grand kids have been getting after me a lot lately. They want to me to put some of that antivirus software on my computer. I don't know a thing about this stuff. I don't understand why I even need it. I use my computer for email and reading the news.

Here's my reply: (with a little extra added here for clarification)

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Thanks for writing, Martha.

I'm glad to hear your grandkids have been after you to get antivirus software. They're wise beyond their years. :-)

The first question here is:

Do I need antivirus software?
Since there are so many different ways a computer can get a virus, the question to ask to decide if you need antivirus software is:

What would happen if your PC got a virus?
The main risks of viruses are that they tend to be:

1. destructive
2. personally invasive
3. resource thieves

The first thing is easy to understand. Viruses can delete your files.

If you have nothing of value on your PC, there's no risk here other than the time and cost for a PC shop to restore your PC and get it back into a working state.

On the other hand, if you do have things of value (real or sentimental) on your PC, maybe photos, music, emails, or the like, what would be involved in restoring those files, assuming it's possible?

As for viruses being personally invasive, it means viruses can steal your files, your data, and under the right circumstances even your identity.

Ditto here. If there's nothing of value on your PC, the risks are the time and cost of repair. If you use your computer for things like online banking, doing your taxes, or medical-related stuff, what's the risk of this information falling into the wrong hands?

The last one, resource theft, means viruses can burrow their way onto your PC and can make your computer a part of a "botnet".

Botnets are often used for sending spam, so if your PC gets sucked into a virus botnet, it's pretty likely someone would start using it to send their spams, probably without you even knowing it.

Even if there's truly no risk of data loss or theft (which isn't really the case, but assuming it is), if your computer is in a botnet, it's definitely being used for malicious purposes, something most folks don't want.

As to how you get a virus, there are a lot of ways computers get viruses. These days, the bad guys are resorting to taking over legitimate websites and using clever tricks to confuse people--or their computers--to installing their viruses.

How you get a virus is actually less important than what would happen if you got one, which is the real question to ask yourself if you're trying to figure out if you need antivirus software.