Can You Trust Free Antivirus Software?

[wanker125]

Lots of companies offer software that’s supposed to stop worms, viruses, and other malware for free. We tested nine such security programs to find the ones you can really depend on.

Erik Larkin, PC World
Aug 24, 2009 8:30 pm

Free antivirus programs vary just as much as paid security programs do in the quality of their protection. And frugal computer users on the hunt for no-cost antivirus software--already faced with tons of options--will have even more to choose from when new free offerings from Microsoft and Panda join the programs currently available from Alwil (Avast), AVG, Avira, Comodo, and PC Tools.


To help you figure out which free antivirus app is right for you, we put packages from all of those companies through their paces. Our testing partner, AV-Test.org of Germany, employed its vast "zoo" of collected malware to test detection rates and scan speed. We then poked and prodded the apps to see which ones made stopping malware an effortless task, and which ones made it feel more like drudgery. For a summary of our findings, see our free antivirus software ranked chart. For our in-depth evaluations, see the individual reviews, linked in this story and in the chart.

article continues at

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170587/can_you_trust_free_antivirus_software.html

[viper2134]

I've been using AVG and As-aware for quite some time and have only had problems twice. I'd strongly recommend them!

[Londoner911]

I'm always impressed by the speed of this one - and entertained by the audio.

[alchemygold]

the only 100% free v.software that you can trust is avg

lots of free software comes with virus etc! avg has a good name and i feel you can trust.

[wanker125]

actually, if you followed the link and read the article, you would see that avg has slipped quite a bit in the rankings. i used to use it, but changed several months ago.

[Spike Spiegel]

To what?

[joeefree]

I uesd to use AVG then went with Mcafee since it comes free with my isp ATT/Yahoo but I have switched to Comodo which is free for home or non commercial use. I like comodo, no problems yet. Plus they have a ton of other free stuff.

[Uhlrich]

I've just renewed my free annual license for Avast. It's easy enough to use and I have no complaints. Seems to need less care & feeding than most others and is relatively unobtrusive (they all seem to interfere a little bit with something or other).
Just looked at the PC World article linked above, they think it's pretty effective. Usually you never know if something is bad till you have something that snuck past it. That hasn't happened yet.

[beginner]

I used AVG and AntiVir so far and did not have any virus infections for years. I preferred AntiVir but switched to AVG cause I had problems connecting to AntiVirs update server. HOwever, that was the only problem, in contrast to that the company for which I am working had a lot of problems with their paid software.

However, the best protection is a smart user. Even the best software can not think for a dumb user. Do not open any attachment send to you without thinking. Do not install any suspect files from suspect sites. Use free software instead of cracked shit. And if you are really smart, do not use a Windows OS, which is difficult to impossible for some.

[Lover_of_Lingerie]

I love AVIRA :D

[Frenzy]

Some of them are great to use like AVG. But others are iffy, always good to look them up and see what other people think before actually downloading/installing.