Spyware, viruses, & security forum: How can I be sure software updates are legit?

I have a Mac and a good while back I downloaded an Adobe Flash update. There was NO difference in the appearance of this update EXCEPT that it was a virus. So, no we shouldn't trust automatic-updaters.

I've used and trusted Adobe for over 20 years too that's why when it happened I was so shocked. Adobe knew about the virus and did not take the steps to inform people or stop the virus until way too late. That's why I say we simply cannot trust any automatic updates/downloads. And we always need to be cautious.

If you are using Mac then your claim may not be valid.

Don't blame Adobe? Adobe has a long and distinguished history of being a vector for malware to infect your computer.

People should most certainly blame Adobe. It's a very popular way for malware to get onto your computer.

Do You remember the way to say: "Trusting is good, but not trusting is BETTER!"?... I don't really think that buying an antivirus and/or antimalware software you're only enriching other dishonest people! Best Regards.

I used AVG Free for several years, and got an email a year ago December notifying me that an update was available. It looked EXACTLY like ones I had received from them in the past, so I proceeded to run the update. After rebooting, I experienced a blue screen failure and my entire system was corrupted by a root-kit virus, destroying the zero sector of the hard drive and rendering the computer useless. So, my warning is similar to others: do not trust anyone or anything and do not run an update from one of these notifications. I have since gone straight to the company's website to first verify whether there is in fact an updated version of the software available. Only after I have confirmed this, and have created a complete system backup, do I run the update. And use a backup service such as BackBlaze or Carbonite to save at least your data, music, photos, etc. It is cheap insurance. Call me paranoid if you want, but this is the only way to protect yourself from the sob's out there who have nothing better to do than to try making the rest of ours lives miserable.

I suggest you look here for a comprehensive list and review

http://www.techsupportalert.com/

The problem with so many of the free products is that they do not offer real-time protection. If you plug in a USB drive and right click on it to scan for malware you typically do not see that option with the free products. The free products are typically detection after the fact and removal if that is even possible.

I typically buy a pro edition of the products so that I have real-time protection. The best course of action is not to get a virus to begin with. Isn't $30 worth not having to spend hours reloading all of your software because of a virus problem?

Also, just last week I added a second product to have added security. I use Zone Alarm on my families computers and they all seemed fine after scans. I read an article about Malwarebytes often picks up junk that others might not. After installing a trial version of it on my wife's computer it picked up 18 pieces of potentially harmful junk on it. I am not paranoid but I believe in covering the bases. I have better things to do than reload software because a corrupted drive.

Ken,
You can't always be sure that the updates are legit. That's why you should backup your computer regularly. Get yourself an external hard drive, and set up a backup schedule. I backup my computer every Sunday, so if something does go wrong, or I'm hit with a virus, I always have a recent backup to reinstall. A good one terabyte, external hard drive, and backup software should cost you no more than $200.00. Believe me it's a cheep price to pay for peace of mind. I hope this helps you.
Regards,
TMV

All depends on how much you value your stuff - if a loss of data is of little consequence, you need not even back up. However, if such loss would cause you pain, then making backups one way or another is desirable. Both your computer and its OS have limitations in this area (read: risks). Buying a huge external HDD plus good backup software can be just the ticket, with a price tag. Consider the potential level of pain, and cough up accordingly. You get what you pay for.

You don't need to buy any backup software. The bottom line is there are now only three hard disk manufacturers. In practice you will have at least one internal or external hard disk from either Seagate or Western Digital. Both have Acronis True Image as a free download but you must have at least one drive from that manufacturer on the system for the software to run. The only negative is that you can't back up just particular files or folders with the OEM versions. But you can just use some form of Copy and Paste for that. At work we use RichCopy, which is free from Microsoft. It lets you set up multiple copy streams simultaneously and if a file is locked, etc., it just ignores that file and checks again later, whereas Window's built-in copy-and-paste routinely stops if a file can't be copied. In fact, we run two instances of RichCopy simultaneously on the same server, one backing up files from that server and the second instance backing up files from the other server, both onto a Dell hard-disk cartridge on the main server.

Over the past several months I've had two Win 8 crashes where I had Acronis backups. In one case I was able to restore the entire disk from the backup and in the other I couldn't although there was nothing wrong with the backup. I don't know the reason for the difference. Both were to SSD's.

One thing nice about True Image is that although the backups can be highly compressed, files and folders can be accessed like any other files.

A few months ago I bought the latest version of PKZip from PKWare. If I just have to back up certain folders I use that until I do a full disk backup. If you download the trial version and then wait a few days you'll get an email offering a 50% discount, which comes to $15. I haven't tried any of the freeware Zip programs but they may work for backups too. I already had an older version of PKZip but wanted to make a single Zip file with about 145GB of data and I didn't want to risk waiting several hours for the data to be Zipped and then possibly be told either the file could not be saved or the Zip was corrupted.

cheap

this is exactly what i am tryin to say in my reply.also

You wrote: "I recently downloaded AVG from your site, and it seems a little out of control. I already have McAfee that is included free from ATT," if you've got two AV apps on one computer, they'll fight each other because each one will think the other's a nasty. Keep the one you prefer and uninstall the other.