Do you really need antivirus running all the time on your computer ?

This is not a question but more a debate for me. I sometimes find my computer's disk being used heavily even though I am not doing anything which can cause it. It turns out that antivirus software installed on my computer is doing regular scan in background and as usual nothing is found.

So, I know why computer gets infected and I don't remember last time computer being infected because 99.99% its because of your own actions, either you are installing a suspicious software or you are simply downloading it from untrusted sources. I not even let reputed sites to install their download manager in my computer as most of the time they will be doing things without my knowledge if I let them to sit in my computer.

There are many decent freeware and I use few of them but when you install, most of them comes with sponsored addons , I also avoid them though they are source income for those freeware. I always use "Custom" installation whenever I install any software so that I know that exactly is going behind it. And if a software don't even let you to choose installation location, its a "NO" in my list.

Yes, I use antivirus software when I plugin usb drive from unknown person or untrusted person (also ignorant) but that happens very rarely on my work machine.

Essentially you know it where you get virus, I just don't go to such places and I feel my antivirus software is sitting for no reason and crunching my disk. I have decided to revoke it only on demand ie. when actually find something suspicious and going to use external media.

Whats your views ?

I am too paranoid to turn off my antivirus but I agree that most of the time it is you who knows where you will pick up virus and being pro-active helps a lot.