Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ 10.5

Ad-Aware originated in 1999 as a tool to warn users about "Web beacons"—tiny, invisible images used by advertisers to track online activities. It evolved into an antispyware tool and then into a full antivirus, capable of fighting all types of malware. The latest edition, Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ 10.5, turned in an impressive performance in PCMag's own antivirus tests. Smooth Operator When you launch the Ad-Aware installer, it downloads the very latest components, to ensure you don't immediately have to update. It also downloads the latest antivirus definitions. Once you've rebooted, its protection is completely ready. Ad-Aware installed without a hitch on ten of my twelve malware-infested test systems. Ransomware on one system hid the desktop, making it inaccessible, but tech support supplied advice that let me get Ad-Aware installed on this one. Malware on another test system interfered with the installer's ability to download fresh components, making installation impossible. Tech support supplied an alternate full-product installer that contains all components, with no need for downloading. That one installed just fine. A couple of the test systems hung repeatedly during the clean-up phase after a full scan. Retrying the scan helped one of those; retrying in Safe Mode let the other one complete its cleanup. What a difference from version 10.0, which effectively "killed" one test system, making it unbootable. The current Ad-Aware gets five stars for ease of installation. Good Malware Cleanup On finishing a scan, Ad-Aware summarizes its results and offers a button to "Fix All Now." Naturally I dug a bit deeper, opting to view the files it had found. I was pleased to see that the scanner defaults to Disinfect for virus-infected files; all too often antivirus products will simply quarantine those files. I let Ad-Aware take the recommended action for all found threats and then tallied the results. Ad-Aware detected 83 percent of the threats, more than any other product tested with this current set of samples. Yes, you'll see in the chart below that Emsisoft Anti-Malware 7.0 "with help" detected 86 percent, but it reached that detection level with hours and hours of work by tech support using over a dozen third-party tools. I can't count that as a score earned by the product itself. avast! Free Antivirus 8 only detected 75 percent of these samples, but due to more through cleanup of what it did find, it scored the same as Ad-Aware, 5.8 points. Emsisoft (without tech support help) also detected 75 percent, but came in with just 4.8 points. Tested with my previous malware collection, AVG Anti-Virus FREE 2013 detected 87 percent and scored 6.5 points, just a hair below Norton AntiVirus (2013)$58.87 at Lenovo and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus 2013$19.99 at Webroot. Norton and Webroot are both Editors' Choice products for overall antivirus protection.

avast! Mobile Security & Antivirus (for Android)

Pros Web protection supports many popular browsers. Strong malware protection. Huge feature set. Remote lock, wipe, and alarm. Network Meter and Privacy Advisor. Powerful SMS commands. Free. Cons No spy camera options. Confusing web interface. Lengthy anti-theft setup. Lockscreen issues. Bottom Line avast! has just about every security feature you could want, and then several more, but this free app will appeal mostly to tinkerers willing to learn avast!'s ins and outs. y8

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014)

Pros Very good scores in PCMag's antivirus tests. Great scores in independent lab tests. Excellent phishing protection. Prevents transmission of private data. ID theft monitoring. New Wallet manages passwords, private data. Safepay hardened browser protects financial transactions. Scans Facebook profile, scans system for vulnerabilities. New Security Report summarizes each week's events. Cons Some difficulty installing on malware-infested systems. Wallet password management limited. Wallet can't fill Web forms. Bottom Line Core antivirus protection in Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014) gets good scores in my tests and great scores from the independent labs. The "Plus" in the name refers to an impressive collection of effective, relevant, security tools. It's a great choice. y8

Norman Antivirus 10

Pros Very easy to understand and use. Preinstall scan averts installation problems. Antivirus scanner deals with malware immediately on discovery. Cons Cleanup process partially disabled one test system. Poor detection of hand-modified malware samples. Bottom Line Norman Antivirus 10 successfully implements a new emphasis on simplicity and ease of use. However, its cleanup partially disabled one test system, and its actual antivirus capabilities don't match those of the very best products. By Neil J. Rubenking Security experts need antivirus protection, but so do folks who just want to use the PC for entertainment and communication. The makers of Norman Antivirus 10 ($45.95 direct for three licenses) aim to make it completely simple and self-explanatory, and for the most part they've succeeded. As for the product's ability to remove malware from an infested system and to keep out further infestations, well, those features could use a little work. Compare Similar Products Compare Selected Norman Antivirus 10 Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2013 $39.95BitDefender Norton AntiVirus (2013) $24.99Norton - Official Store Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus 2013 $19.99Webroot The current edition's user interface has shifted toward big, touch-friendly controls. Large button panels on the main window serve to launch a scan, check for updates, or view files in quarantine; smaller buttons open the task scheduler and settings window. This emphasis on big, self-explanatory controls goes deeper than just the main window. Big sliders turn components on and off, big radio buttons select between different states, and so on. There aren't a lot of configuration options, and all come pre-configured for the best security. View all 10 photos in gallery The one possible source of confusion is the fact that the product installs under the name Norman Security Suite. If you look at the settings page you'll see that antivirus protection is present but the other five suite components marked with a note saying "The license for this product has expired." Don't let it throw you; this really is Norman Antivirus. Preinstall Scan As part of the somewhat lengthy installation process, you'll be offered the chance to run a preinstall scan. This launches a version of Norman Malware Cleaner that's tailored for automatic action. It doesn't log what it did, but I know it found malware on half of my malware-infested test systems because it requested a reboot to complete the cleanup process. The preinstall scan offers to run a follow-up scan after reboot; on one system it ran three times to complete the cleanup process. After a preinstall scan that requires rebooting, you'll have to start the installer again and just skip the preinstall scan this time around. On one test system, malware actively terminated the antivirus scanner every time it launched, and also made booting into Safe Mode impossible. A scan with the full Norman Malware Cleaner didn't help immediately; what solved the problem was uninstalling and reinstalling the full Norman antivirus. Ransomware on another test system renders the desktop inaccessible, even in Safe Mode, making installation of antivirus software impossible. I was absolutely amazed that Norman tech support deduced the exact nature of the ransomware from my sketchy description and supplied a code that unlocked the desktop. Now the bad news. The preinstall scan on one of my systems apparently quarantined or deleted a huge number of important Windows files, among them Notepad and the Windows Installer. As noted, the preinstall scan doesn't log its activity, leaving me in the dark as to just what it did. Going forward, the developers plan to add logging. With a lot of help from tech support I eventually managed to get the product installed and working, but the system remained partially unusable. GET MORE SECURITY COVERAGE: The Best 2012 Security Suites The Best Antivirus for 2012 Security Product Guide Security Watch I rate the antivirus installation experience on a five-star scale, with five stars meaning the product installed on all my test systems with little or no hassle. The more time and effort needed the fewer stars, with two stars normally meaning it took hours and hours of interaction with tech support. Utter failure to install on one or more systems earns a single star; completely disabling one or more systems gets no stars at all. The amount of work required to get Norman installed and scanning on all twelve systems would have earned it three stars for installation, except for the fact that it left one system partly disabled. I'm knocking it down to two stars, since the damaged test system was still partially functional.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus

Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus : You Are Protected Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus's sleek main screen lets you know that you're protected. You can click the button to scan, but you really don't have to; the program will perform that task in the background. Installation is very quick. Copy your license code into the box, click "Agree and Install", and the program will be installed and scanning in mere seconds. If Webroot has detected threats it will launch a scan and quickly round up all traces. You can click to view the scan in progress, but you don't actually have to do anything. Immediately upon installation Webroot launches a deep scan to clean up any existing malware infestations. Webroot presents a list of the threats it found and waits for you to click Next before removing them. In theory you could exempt any of the found threats from removal, but there's almost never any reason to do that.

F-Secure Anti-Virus 2013

F-Secure Anti-Virus 2013 Pros F-Secure has an innovative interface and impressive resource use. Cons It does not have anti-phishing capability. The Verdict : 8.5/10 F-Secure Anti-Virus is among the best performing antivirus software programs. Buy F-Secure Anti-Virus 2013 Windows 7 Protection Score Windows 7 Repair Score Windows 7 Usability Score How well does the product pass Protection tests? Level of test success F-Secure Anti-Virus 92% Compare to the Top 3 AntiVirus Software #1 Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 100% #2 Kaspersky Anti-Virus 92% #3 Norton AntiVirus 83% Category Average 81.35% Percentage 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 Review Specifications Images Side By Side Comparison Learning Center LIKE OUR REVIEWS? SUPPORT OUR SITE ON FACEBOOK OR GOOGLE PLUS F-Secure Anti-Virus is among the best antivirus software programs. It is streamlined, fast and effective. With advanced protection technology and additional integrated security features, F-Secure protects against viruses, spyware, worms and Trojans. F-Secure can also locate and eliminate rootkits. This antivirus software also protects against viruses spread through emails, cookies or malware that attempts to infiltrate the PC registry. AV-Test out of Germany places F-Secure among the leaders when it comes to performance. F-Secure is also among the handful of antivirus software products to win an Advanced A+ rating from AV Comparatives. The Virus Bulletin found F-Secure right on par with most of the best antivirus software competitors. Taking F-Secure Anti-Virus from start to scanning is straightforward. The installer automatically removes any other antivirus software you have installed (as they interfere with each other). The software is a fairly resource-conscious program and protects without sacrificing resources. Anti-Virus from F-Secure accommodates simple navigation and makes it easy to schedule specific scans or adjust settings. The main dashboard features quick access to the essentials (scan, update, statistics) and is visually striking. Most of the time you won’t even have F-Secure open since the updates and scans run automatically. The easy-to-understand icon in the lower-right taskbar will help you comprehend the status of your security. F-Secure uses a protection network, DeepGuard 2.0, that collects new threats in the cloud and pushes out updates to the entire user community. F-Secure Anti-Virus uses heuristics, proactive protection against zero-hour threats that go undetected by the current virus signatures. All files accessed or opened on your computer are scanned by F-Secure’s on-access scanning. But you can always perform a manual scan. If you want to scan a specific file or folder, simply right-click on it and scan it immediately. F-Secure can scan compressed files and files on removable drives. You can configure the software to clean the files (if possible) automatically, or they will be placed in the quarantine. The quarantine is where potentially dangerous files are kept where they can’t cause damage until you decide what action (restore, delete) to take. Updates are scheduled by default with F-Secure to renew (if needed) every two hours, completely automatically and in the background. F-Secure Anti-Virus has a number of useful resources available online for additional product support. You can contact technical support 24/7 by phone, email live chat. Online they feature several help articles and a knowledgebase. Direct in-product help is in the form of a user manual.