Why is it not recommended to have 2 antivirus programs running at the same time?
In: Technology
Because they both will think that another one is a virus, they will fight each other untill your whole computer dies
You click to open a file. The first AV intercepts the open command, opens the file and reads it to check if it’s ok. The second AV also wants to open the file to check if it is ok and it can’t because it’s already open. The second AV freaks out because it doesn’t know what happened, and tries write a log file about it. The first AV sees the log file being written too and wants to check if the stuff being written is ok, so it tries to open the log file to check what’s in there and blocks the second AV from writing to its log. The second AV freaks out even more. And so on and so on.
AVs can end up competing and interfering with each other due to the way they intercept file access.
The biggest problem between OSes is that Windows was designed and created as a single user system, and that user has to be able to do anything, otherwise they can’t maintain their system or do anything useful. Unix, and its descendants, were/are designed to be a multi-user system. Only one, or a few users can do anything to the system, or run programs that can modify the system. RandomUser can only store/modify/delete things in their home directory, and programs they run can only do the same.
Antivirus programms slow down your computer while not providing any real value in 99% of all cases.
2 Antivirus programs slow you computer even more down while still providing no value
Antivirus programs will scan your file system, intercept internet connections, contains millions of virus footprints and run in elevated position and embed itself deep into your operating system. All this is done so that it’s hard for a virus to hide from the anti virus software, but it is also a typical trojan behavior.
It’s like somebody having two competing immune systems, you are sure to get autoimmune disease as an immune system behave like a really really bad infection if you don’t understand the mechanic.
By the way, it’s also why antivirus are an ideal vector for infection as they have such high privileges. It is technically dangerous to install an antivirus, you need to trust it. Installing two means you need to trust two, you make yourself more fragile.
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