this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
419 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy Guides

16556 readers
49 users here now

In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more...


Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!


This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

Additional Resources:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 10 points 6 months ago (10 children)
[–] frogmint@beehaw.org 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Read that Wikipedia page from yourself. Anti-virus is recommended by the quoted Scott Granneman for Samba servers, NFS servers, and Linux mail servers. For desktop use, Linux has a clear advantage compared to Windows.

The use of software repositories significantly reduces any threat of installation of malware

As long as you keep your packages up to date, don't install random packages found online, and don't run random scripts, desktop Linux is very secure. No one is using a zero-day to target your home office computer behind your router's firewall unless you're a high value target.

On the other hand, Windows users almost have to install software from the wider internet. Windows also doesn't have an easy way to keep everything updated. Your PDF reader could have a known vulnerability for a year before you finally update it. Add to the fact that Windows has more desktop users and is thus a bigger target for desktop-style malware, and the difference isn't even close.

Most users do not need anti-virus on Linux.

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Samba servers, NFS servers, and Linux mail servers.

Precisely because you'd be scanning for Windows viruses on those mounted drives and emails! :-D

[–] frogmint@beehaw.org 3 points 6 months ago

Yeah probably lol. If it's a Linux virus that you can detect with a scan, then there's probably already a patch ready (or coming very soon) to fix the vulnerability. I could be wrong on this though.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)