It started with an idea. And a necessity. I live in Africa, and I couldn't afford to buy a full-fledged, licensed Antivirus. I struggled with the thought for a while, and then it hit me. If I could reduce my vulnerability footprint or Infection Vector to one, then it should be possible to get adequate malware protection without having to spend a dime or a nickel.
Malware consists of malevolent or malicious software developed by some programming wizard, somewhere in a dark corner of the world, for the singular purpose of penetration, acquistion of private or restricted data and exploiting that data for intellectual, political, financial or social gain. To that end such software are designed to slip in through the cracks of a system's protection, find a safe, comfortable hiding place and gain escalated or privileged access to target data without the victim being aware of its presence or operations. Examples of malware are virii, Trojans, worms, etc.
I wanted peace of mind. I had to be sure that my system was safe from these evil software. And I had a lean pocket. So I analyzed my computer usage habits, my internet surfing patterns, and my data needs. I realized that if I could eliminate the possibility of external physical contamination, for example from infected flash drives, CD-ROMs and other types of external drives, and if I could reduce my vulnerability footprint/infection vector to just the Internet, then all I need to do is find a way of sand-boxing executable applications on my system. Of all the browsers that I looked at, Google Chrome was the only one I liked that came with pre-built sand-boxing.
I also wanted some kind of malware protection that would update itself automatically out of the box and not require elaborate installation. I decided to take a huge risk and try BitDefender's in-browser online malware protection. I don't know what other people think, but to me, BitDefender QuickScan is a miracle of antivirus technology. I installed QuickScan as a browser plugin or extension, removed my trail-version antivirus, installed Google Chrome Beta, and almost 1.5 years later my system remains uninfected and fast. It turns out that Chrome has in-built antivirus protection too, so between these two interesting technologies I have been able to work with what should be an inadequately protected system for almost two years without getting infected.
All I had to make sure of since then is that every external drive that plugs into my system is clean before electronic contact. Sometimes I make sure of that by simply formatting USB drives before using them.
How's that for a cheap effective use of innovative technology?
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