Which is the best free anti-virus?
As with many of my blog posts my reason for writing this is due to the question What is the best free Anti Virus?being asked over and over again on many of the sites and forums I frequent.
The question is a bit of an ambiguous one as there is no clear answer to which is the “best”.
How would you measure it? Which ever detects the most viruses? Whichever has the lowest impact on system performance? Which has the most success in removing viruses? Which has the most success at stopping them infecting in the first place?
The list of measurements is endless. There are some companies that have started independent work to answer some of these. Such as AV comparitives.org and Virus Bulletin VB100 Awardsto name two. These of course test more than the free ones and still sometimes come to no conclusive answer as to which is the best.
However what we can do is take a look at the info they provide and if one of the AV vendors scores highly, check to see if they have a free version. If so then it is likely their free product is also fairly robust.
Two of the most highly regard “paid for” AV products are NOD32 by Eset and Vipre by Subelt. These are the ones I see experts in the field recommending time and time again. I have also used the NOD32 product extensively myself and found it to be excellent in all areas mentioned in the questions above.
Enough of your waffle, which is best?
Ok fair enough I do tend to get carried away.
Looking at the tests mentioned above we see the following names mentioned:
- Avast
- AVG
- Avira
All received the VB100 awards in the latest round of testing and all have paid for and FREE versions
Deciding which is the best out of the 3, is from here on in, down to personal preference.
Avast! http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download
A great program with little to complain about. If I had to mention anything it would be the user interface. There is nothing wrong it functionally, but if your like me someone who like to tinker, then this is a little on the clunky side at times.
Another superb free Anti Virus. The only thing I don’t like about this one, is the need to re-register every year to continue using it. Not really a bad thing, but can be annoying if you install it for lots of people as you need lots of email addresses to register each copy to.
Avira http://www.avira.com/en/downloads/
This is my personal favourite. It scores highly on all tests and doesn’t require registration. Its only downside is that when it updates every day, you get a pop up advertising it’s paid for alternative. A small price to pay for a great free product.
Surely there are more than this?
Of course there are, there are loads if you search the web for them, these are just three main ones that are used and recommended by security professionals.
While these are excellent Anti Virus products, if you are looking for free tools to remove existing viruses on your system that your current AV product cannot get rid of, then here are the tools used by the experts in the field.
Note: Most of these tools should only be used with expert guidance as some can cause damaged when used incorrectly.
- MBAM: http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
- Combofix: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix
- Spybot Search & Destroy: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
- HiJackThis: http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/
If you would like guidance and help removing viruses using these tools, then please post a question in our
Anti Virus and Spyware forum and one of our Malware Monkeys will be glad to help.
—–
As ever if you found this information useful or you think there are any errors please take the time to register and leave us a comment.
- Techmonkey
Happy Surfing
That’s an excellent blog post! Can you add a RSS feed to your blog?
[quote='geohac' pid='131581' dateline='1288655275']
That’s an excellent blog post! Can you add a RSS feed to your blog?
[/quote]
You can get the RSS feed from http://blog.techmonkeys.co.uk/feed/rss/
Also to chip in with my own 2p, my free anti-virus of choice would be Microsoft Security Essentials, from what I have seen it is the most light weight and unobtrusiveness and I have never had any malware problems while running it but I am fairly careful about these things anyway.
Yes I am hearing good things about the MS security essentials, although I havent tried it personally so could not add it to my list.
I have a couple of machines at home I will roll it out on to and see how I get on
I would also recommend Microsoft Security Essentials. Started using it when it came out about 6 or 8 months ago and I haven’t had an infection. However, I am a pretty safe surfer
Remember to add the install path to its exceptions so it doesn’t keep scanning itself
Is this “The” Big-P ?
tee hee hee, sent him a PM when i saw him register.
And yes i believe it is
[quote='Techmonkey' pid='131606' dateline='1288710351']
Is this “The” Big-P ?
[/quote]
BigP responding to facebook advert SIR!
Combofix link is not the offical site. Also, Please DO NOT USE COMBOFIX on your own without supervision!!! See more at:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic273628.html
[quote='BigP' pid='131614' dateline='1288713327']
[quote='Techmonkey' pid='131606' dateline='1288710351']
Is this “The” Big-P ?
[/quote]
BigP responding to facebook advert SIR!
[/quote]
Welcome aboard me old mucka
[quote='Kenny94' pid='131622' dateline='1288740409']
Combofix link is not the offical site. Also, Please DO NOT USE COMBOFIX on your own without supervision!!! See more at:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic273628.html
[/quote]
Good call Kenny, amended !
I imagine there are a lot fewer people on here who use a Unix based operating system but you can’t go far wrong with Clam AV http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/
[quote]Avira http://www.avira.com/en/downloads/
This is my personal favourite. It scores highly on all tests and doesn’t require registration. Its only downside is that when it updates every day, you get a pop up advertising it’s paid for alternative. A small price to pay for a great free product.[/quote]
Avira free removed the pop ups ads. Be sure to do a full removal and reinstall of a new version of Avira free. If installed on your PC. Before this change.
http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php…hreadID=121023
BitDefender Antivirus is the best free anti-virus, this anti-virus is very effective against the virus, this anti-virus also provide online protection, this anti-virus is easy to install and use.