Last week I was at a client with a handful of desktop computers. One of them needed some network configuration and I went on my merry way and completed it. In the course of my troubleshooting I noticed the security software was having a problem on a Microsoft Windows computer. My client said , “Oh yeah, we’ve been getting warnings for a while about McAfee Livesafe. We didn’t know what to do about it.” That’s a bad practice to ignore a security warning. It turns out this warning was saying the subscription had run out and it wasn’t updating the virus signatures any longer. I’ve seen some virus software packages that were two years out of date and the owner just ignored the warnings! This means new viruses are unknown to the security software and can’t protect you from them.
In this case I discussed the alternatives with my client: renew McAfee, remove it and put something in it’s place, or do nothing. I installed Comodo Internet Security in it’s place and then removed McAfee Livesafe. This computer is protected now with three kinds of security. My client was lucky and no viruses were found after a Comodo scan.
If your security software alerts you to something, don’t ignore it – get help with it if you don’t know what to do.