ISP claims infections, nothing found

[Matt1970]

You are asking for trouble browsing the net without AV software.

That's rubbish. This is a far better analogy: AV software is, at best, a seat belt in a head-on car crash, and at worst, AV is a placebo that makes people feel invincible so that they drive in a way that results in many more head-on car crashes.

[rant] Have I encountered malware? Sure, countless times. Have I had drive-by downloads and other attempts to surreptitiously install things on my system? Yes. Do I browse porn sites and other high-risk places? Yes to that, too. Do I use AV? Hell no. How many times have I been compromised, infected, etc. in all my years of computing (over 20 years)? Zero. And of all the numerous systems that I've had to manually disinfect and clean for other people, how many of them had some sort of AV software installed? Every single one.

[/rant]

Wow. Not only are you giving horrible advice, you are actually giving the reasons why your advise is horrible. Are there times stuff will get by anti-virus software? Absolutely. Would there be a heck of a lot more infected computers out there if people didn't use anti-virus? Also absolutely. In all the years I have computing (24 years) and in all my years of fixing computers (17 years) I lost count of how many times I have seen anti-virus catch infections. I have also lost count of how many times I have had customers of mine call me when their anti-virus catches something and that's only when it doesn't automatically take of the file and gives them options on what to do.

 

[sm625]

Technically, all windows computers are infected. The whole NSA/spying thing... It is pretty dumb that the ISP usually wont even tell you which IP address on your LAN is causing the "problem."