Stay Fully Protected Without Using An Anti-Virus Program – Part II

This article covers on How To Stay Completely Safe from Malware Infections when Offline.

Previously, I had written and shared a tutorial for you on how to use the Sandboxing technique to easily and safely avoid being infected on the internet. I had revised the tutorials several times to make them clear, precise and simple enough to allow each and every reader grasp the concept and it’s implementation process. This being the second part of the “main idea”, take your time to read this article on how you can avoid and even ‘safely’ play around/ test malware infected programs. Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, dishonest adware, crimeware, most rootkits, and other malicious and unwanted software.|Wiki|

We all know that malware can intrude our computer from USB drives and disks. You insert your colleague’s pen drive not knowing that it’s infected and you soon realize that your computer is no longer working as it should. Or you want to try out a software/ game that you aren’t sure if it is infected or not. These two scenarios is usually encountered by almost every Windows user.

Downland and install these freeware tools in order to make the entire concept work:

• Sandboxie
• Malwarebytes (this anti-malware program does not run as a background process and is very useful to check and confirm the safety of your computer after you have done using the infected program in the sandbox)

Points to Remember before we start:

• Use this method for experimental purpose. If you are not comfortable implementing it then stop using this method right away and use an anti-virus program to stay safe.
• Take responsibility for websites you visit, links you click on and things you download, if you wish to stay safe.
• No virus can harm your system unless it is executed and running.
• This article has nothing to do with using a firewall. If your computer is connected to any network like the internet itself, then it is 100% important to use a firewall.
• Smarter techniques always require some effort for implementation.
• Use Malwarebytes freeware as it does not run in the background thus saving your resources and use it to scan new media like USB drives, CDs, DVDs, e.t.c
• Skills required to understand and implement this guide: Intermediate to Experienced user.
• This tutorial is suitable only for Windows Operating Systems: Windows XP and later.
• This tutorial will teach you to set up your computer to “not use anti-virus protection is background” and in such a way that you run applications, whether infected or not, in a safe and fake environment and whenever your end up executing a infected program, you can easily stop and reverse the actions of the program with just closing it.

Benefits of implementing this method:

• You won’t have to buy anti-virus, anti-malware programs.
• Your computer would be much safer than what you would get with the anti-malware programs.
• Your computer will run faster as more RAM will be available without the anti-virus running in the background.

The Tutorial:

• Select and run any suspicious file/ program by using the right click option as shown in the illustration,

• Sandboxie will run the selected program in a safe and “isolated” environment,
• When you are done using the concerned program, right click on the program name in the Sandboxed list and click ‘terminate’,

• This will terminate the program and remove all the files and infections (if any) that the program had created from the ‘isolated’ environment.
• Using program like paint/ photoshop requires project files to be saved after the work is done. Using these programs sandboxed will give you a message asking to ‘recover’ the saved file from the sandbox or to ‘keep’ them inside the sandbox. Recovering will get your project work safely out of the sandbox and thus avoid getting deleted. Keeping it inside will of course, get deleted once the program is terminated.

• If you want to make sure if your computer is really safe after all this, you should scan your computer with Malwatebytes program or any anti-virus program you prefer. I suggest you to use Malwarebytes since as said before, does not run as a background process thus reducing the possibility of your computer getting slowed down.

This technique will require patience and practice initially. But, it is a nice experiment to try out. 😀

So, what are your thoughts on this?