Where can I download a non-harmful virus?

A

audiobahn1000

Member
I was wondering if there is like a virus I can download that is non-harmful to test my anti virus program. Like a virus that is designed to just test anti virus programs and nothing else.
 
Why would you want to test your Anti-Virus for? What one are you using? Usually the websites that you get the program from offer free tests to make sure that you are covered. I wouldn't trust some virus you find from google that 'states' it's a test virus. Just scan your machine, if you don't have any viruses, it works, if you do and you can't remove them, it doesnt. To be on the safe side try a trusted online scanner too for double checking purposes.
 
Oh man. Ummm. Mcaffee sucks the big one. It's worse than Norton. I promise you that it misses virii all the time. That's not to say you have one now, but it has very poor detection capabilities.

Make sure you do a regular scan with Panda ActiveScan.
 
SirKenin said:
Oh man. Ummm. Mcaffee sucks the big one. It's worse than Norton. I promise you that it misses virii all the time. That's not to say you have one now, but it has very poor detection capabilities.
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hmmm...never had any trouble so far... And its definitely not worse than Norton which is probably the worst program ever written ! (Had LOTS of issues with that one !)

However, a regular scan of the comp is indeed a good thing to do, independently of what AV soft u're using...
 
Last time I checked a benchmark website for most commonly used anti viruses, McAffee wasnt that good at all. The detection rate, update availabilities and how frequent they were, resource effiency etc was quite poor. I think the best were AVG and NOD32. I've used both of those and they're really good. You should give them a try.
 
Well, all the following benchmark sites are listing McAffe as...number 1 (or 2)...
http://antivirus.about.com/cs/beforeyoubuy/tp/aatpavwin.htm
http://www.consumersearch.com/www/software/antivirus-software/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/124475-1/article.html

You would probably be able to find other sites stating exactly the opposite... :P

Truth might be somewhere in the middle, I don't know. I would probably just say that once you've found an AV soft which you're satisfied with, don't change it just because other people tell you to do so.
 
I don't care what websites say. I care about what I see when I'm on a job. And what I see when I am on a job is computers with Mcaffee installed that are infected with all kinds of virii that I have to turn around and clean up. That to me tells me that Mcaffee sucks big time.
 
mcaffee does suck misses tons of viruses. Personally i use adaware-se and it does great. Every once in a while i run spybot, but i think it only picked up something once.
 
Yea dude, Mcaffe and Norton suck big time. Nod32, AVG, Avast, and AntiVir are way better.
As for a test virus, i wouln't want to try because you might get a virus.
 
SirKenin said:
I don't care what websites say. I care about what I see when I'm on a job. And what I see when I am on a job is computers with Mcaffee installed that are infected with all kinds of virii that I have to turn around and clean up. That to me tells me that Mcaffee sucks big time.
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Agreed. All of the machines that I have had in my presence with viruses and having the owner saying 'please please fix this computer, its busted', usually all run McAffee also.
 
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