anti-malware

While AVG has made some important security improvements in its latest major release, including important protection against fake antivirus and ransomware, how the suite impacts your PC is the focus of AVG 2012. Available at no cost as AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 (download), or as a paid upgrade to AVG Anti-Virus 2012 (download) or AVG Internet Security 2012 (download), AVG's 2012 offerings hang their hats on major performance gains.

Specifically, the company says that it has reduced by 40 percent the size on your hard drive of the virus signature database. That database is a major component of how … Read more

In a perfect world, you wouldn't be concerned about safety when you use your computer. Short of that, you just want to feel confident your PC is virus-free, protected from the prospect of future infections, and easy to recover if something goes wrong. Three things that will help ease your mind are a manual malware scan, an easy-to-restore copy of your hard drive, and a sandbox for your browser to run in.

Run your system through a second-opinion virus scanner Even the best real-time antivirus scanners miss a small percentage of malware. A second scan with a different virus … Read more

With Avast 6 fresh out of the gate and CNET's opinion on record, it's time to ask you which of the many free security suites available is your favorite. The big three on Download.com are AVG, Avast, and Avira, although it will be interesting to see if the download counts are reflected in popularity. We aimed to have all the major players represented here, although we left out certain choices like ClamWin Antivirus, technically still in beta.

The poll will remain open until 11 p.m. PT March 3, and we'll look at the results March … Read more

New security features designed to keep its more than 110 million users safe debut in Avast 6, released today exclusively from CNET Download.com. They also have the added benefit of raising the competitive bar in computer security by pushing more and better free options to users. Avast Free Antivirus 6, Avast Pro Antivirus 6, and Avast Internet Security 6 all feature the new AutoSandbox and the WebRep browser add-on. (Click the links to get to the download page.)

The debut of the AutoSandbox makes Avast the second antivirus to offer a sandboxing tool for free. Comodo introduced a sandboxing … Read more

The fall months may be the season for colder weather and dying leaves, but in the software world it means major updates for security suites. We've reviewed and benchmarked 11 suites, organized them along the traditional line of cost, and picked one in each category that we highly recommend.

We looked at four updated free security options: AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011, Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.3, Microsoft Security Essentials 2, and Ad-Aware Free Internet Security 9. Other well-known free security programs, such as Avast and Avira, generally update in late winter or spring, so they were not included.

AVG … Read more

The free version of Lavasoft's Ad-Aware 9 marks the launch of two new detection engines and some performance tweaks that make it faster. Check out CNET's First Look video, and whether you're a longtime user or new to the program, let us know what you think about it in the comments below.

In its third update of the year, Ad-Aware receives a hefty change to how it protects you. Lavasoft's Ad-Aware 9 Free, available today exclusively on CNET Download.com, debuts two new detection engines as the company fights to keep its well-known freeware competitive.

Lavasoft first started changing Ad-Aware's protection engine more than a year ago in version 8.1, when it introduced Genotype. This heuristics-based technology identified identical snippets of code across multiple threat mutations. In version 9, Genotype receives support from what Lavasoft calls "Dedicated Detection". This tech looks inside files, analyzes the code, and … Read more

AVG Free might've flagged just a little in the past few years, but it's back with a shorter install, better usability, and faster scans. Take a video tour of AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011 and see what makes AVG one of the most respected names in Windows security.

To mark the first anniversary of Microsoft Security Essentials, the company has released some sobering statistics it has gathered during the past year via the free anti-malware software.

According to Microsoft, Security Essentials has been installed on 31 million computers worldwide. Out of that group, 27 million users reported malware infections during the year.

The United States was the most frequently attacked country. Microsoft said that during the past year, more than 2 million U.S. machines were attacked and reported the infections to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. The U.S. was followed by China, which had over 693,… Read more