A former Mozilla Firefox developer published a blog post explaining how harmful anti-virus software can be. The ex-developer implores that users remove third-party anti-virus software and to stick with Microsoft's own Windows Defender.
Third-party anti-virus software actually doing more harm than good. According to a blog post by Mozilla Firefox ex-developer Robert O'Callahan, there is considerable evidence that shows that anti-virus software from third-party providers actually harms the computers they are installed on. The issue is that anti-virus software companies generally do not follow standard security practices causing web browsers and other internet-connected applications to break down. This is after Google Chrome security engineer Justin Schuh called out anti-virus software vendors for causing security issues, breaking Chrome features such as HSTS pinning.
In general, anti-virus software uses poorly written and implemented code and thus are bug-ridden. These bugs can open up potential vector attacks for hackers to use and infiltrate a computer system.
Anti-virus software is invasive in nature. They inject their own code into browsers which interfere with normal processes. For example, some features ion Mozilla Firefox would not run because of the interference caused by anti-virus software. One major process that is compromised involves important updates making it difficult for software developers to improve oi their products' security.
A perfectly good web browser can become slow and bloated because of an anti-virus software add-on. This perfectly good web browser could end up hogging memory affecting the whole system in the process.
O'Callahan implores users to disable all third-party anti-virus software and not continue paying for them as they basically do more harm than good. Instead, he is advising users to stick with Microsoft Windows Defender which he says is a competent enough anti-virus software. On the other hand, users of older operating systems such as Windows 7 or Windows XP need not worry as third-party anti-virus software make them marginally more secure.
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