Do you use scheduled scans for malware ?

[Elsie]

Malware

Malware (short for "malicious" and "software") is any program or software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. Malware is a category of malicious code that includes viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

Malware can hijack your browser, redirect your search attempts, serve up nasty pop-up ads, track what web sites you visit, and generally screw things up. Malware programs are usually poorly-programmed and can cause your computer to become unbearably slow and unstable in addition to all the other havoc they wreak. Destructive malware will utilize popular communication tools to spread, including worms sent through email and instant messages, Trojan horses dropped from web sites, and virus-infected files downloaded from peer-to-peer connections. Malware works to remain unnoticed, either by actively hiding or by simply not making its presence on a system known to the user

Types of malware

Although there is no official breakdown, we can divide malware into several broad categories of malware: adware, spyware, hijackers, toolbars, and dialers. Many, if not most malware programs will fit into more than one category.

So my question to everyone: Do you use scheduled scans for malware? How often?

[Mayank Joshi]

I dont keep scheduled scan, as it needs that the computer should be on at that scheduled time. Also, if I am doing some heave work and the scheduled scan start, it slows down the process drastically. That irritates me. So I scan manually every month.

[5parts]

Yes I do scheduled scans every day at 3 p.m. (during my lunch time). I believe you can get infected by malware in several ways. Malware often comes bundled with other programs (Kazaa, iMesh, and other file sharing programs seem to be the biggest bundlers). These malware programs usually pop-up ads, sending revenue from the ads to the program's authors. Others are installed from websites, pretending to be software needed to view the website. Still others, most notably some of the CoolWebSearch variants, install themselves through holes in Internet Explorer like a virus would, requiring you to do nothing but visit the wrong web page to get infected.