Windows 7 Why does a machine keep getting infected??

geo77 said:

Hello all,

A friend's computer has windows 7 with an antivirus and the up to date definitions, and the user is a Standard user, the computer keeps getting infected.

I have cleaned this computer before, but it just keeps happening. I've noticed that this happens a lot with windows, shouldn't having an antivirus, spyware checker, prevent the computer from getting infected??

Can you tell I'm not a windows user?? lol

Thanks for any help.

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Not all antivirus software is created equal. Some are much better than others, so some malware will slip through any program. There should be only one (good) anti-virus program actively running in the background (more than one will slow the computer to a crawl). However, you can regularly do manual scans using other programs to catch anything the primary one missed. There are numerous evaluations and recommendations (from true third parties) of the good anti-virus software available (much of it free).

That said, if that computer is repeatedly getting infected, first ensure that the anti-virus checkers are run and rerun until they report a clean machine. When an active virus is infecting a computer, it is infecting new files even while the anti-virus software is running. It often takes multiple scans to completely clean it out.

Second, be aware that some web sites are basically contagion breeders (two types: essentially scam sites created to spread malware and legit sites that have become infected). There are various add-ons for browsers that will flag known problem sites and alert you before you click on them. As you can imagine, these sites are rarely esoteric sites of narrow special interest. They are typically sites designed to suck in people by offering free stuff, solutions to common problems, magical cures for diseases, porn, etc.

Third, the user can be the "source" by being gullible, overly trusting, and unaware of the social engineering scams used to get people to open infected email or click on malware sites. Users need to develop "radar" for the common scams that are used to infect computers. The safe habit is not to open any email you don't recognize or if you're not sure, open it in text mode with everything in the message disabled. If the email software has a preview window with text mode, much of the problem stuff can be spotted there.