Thread: Best free anti virus software to download

I am surprised how many of you still use AVG. Out of the three top free anti virus software, that would be the 3rd on the list... Avast is far superior to AVG and Avira antivir is the top one at the moment;. It will find viruses that AVG or Avast will not find. I have run it on several of my other computers that previosly had Avast installed and was surprised to find that 3 of the computers had viruses on that Avast had not detected.

The email scanning is not an issue because it detects any virus as soon as you open an email that contains a virus.

Some people are just not open to change.

Originally Posted by munruben

Some people are just not open to change.

Not at all mate, its just that i've done the whole anti-virus shuffle for way too many years & i've found for the most part theres usually very little difference between the 1st place & 4th place programs. These days i'm happy to stay with AVG until i hear that its not up to the job any more.
In i think 5 or 6 years that i've been using AVG free i've never had a virus thru on this PC & only the once on the wifes lappy. Thats good enough performance for me!

Originally Posted by Rattrap

These days i'm happy to stay with AVG until i hear that its not up to the job any more.
In i think 5 or 6 years that i've been using AVG free i've never had a virus thru on this PC & only the once on the wifes lappy. Thats good enough performance for me!

Thats great but if you scanned your computer with Avira, more than likely you will find you have some sort of virus that AVG does not detect. That is the whole point, I had AVG annd switched to Avast some time ago and as far as I knew had no viruses on my computers. On installing Avira, it immediately detected viruses that Avast did not detect. I am surprised that you have not had a virus on your computer in 6 years. Thanks for your comments. If you are happy with what you have, by all means stick with it.

Originally Posted by munruben

The latest, free anti virus software available for download is Avira Antivir personal. You can read about it Here I have installed it on my computers and it does the job better than Avast which is what I was using up until a couple of months ago. I ran this program immediately after installing it and it found quite a few nasties that Avast had not picked up on. Most of the computer geeks now reccommend this free software so I thought I would just pass on the link so you can judge for yourself.

After reading this review I changed from Avast (after I got sick of the upgrade issues with AVG) to Avira. It's true that Avira picked up a couple of Trojans that Avast missed (although I never ran a thorough scan with Avast) and it also picked up a "virus" that Avast missed (see copy of email below).
After being re-assured by the publishers that their program contained no virus/trijan/malaware I checked the ignore option for that particular program and emailed Avira asking for confirmation that it was indeed a false positive. Even though I had added the suspect program to the ignore list Avira kept warning me that the program was "suspicious", this combined with their non response to my emails plus the nag screens wanting me to register have seen me revert back to Avast.
After re-installing Avast I did a thorough scan and Avast picked up several trojans that Avira missed. This has led me to believe that it may be a good idea to swap between the top three (Avira, Avast and AVG) on a regular basis seeing as not all virus'/trojans/malaware is caught by all programs.


Copy of email sent to publishers of QPR:
Dear Support Team
I have recently installed Avira AntiVir Personal on my computer and it has detected a problem within QPR.exe. I have included the full report in this email. I understand that there can be false positives with all antivirus programs, but would appreciate documented advice that your program does not contain any spyware/malware code.

Regards
John (Registered User)

Copy of response from QPR:
Hello, thank you for writing!

Quick Photo Resizer uses a protection system called ASProtect to encrypt the program code in an attempt to prevent violations of our copyright. Most viruses also employ similar code encryption to make it harder to detect the virus and to analyze its inner workings. That is why some (usually unpopular) antiviral programs show false positives for applications protected with ASProtect. Please report the false positive to the makers of Avira AntiVir.

--
Alexander Dzyubenko

Copy of email sent to publishers of Avira:
Please find enclosed copies of emails sent to the publishers of Quick Photo Resizer after Avira located a virus within QPR.exe.
As stated in the user guide I am forwarding a zipped copy of the suspect file. The password is "hello".

Please advise if this is indeed a false positive as stated by the publishers of QPR.

Regards
John

Response from Avira:

Originally Posted by Grumpy John

This has led me to believe that it may be a good idea to swap between the top three (Avira, Avast and AVG) on a regular basis seeing as not all virus'/trojans/malaware is caught by all programs.

Viruses are a very real and present threat to anyone using a computer, if they are online. As a result, most users will nowadays have some form of anti-virus software installed on their system. They’ll also most likely keep it up to date as new viruses appear.

Many users however are unaware of a very important fact. That their anti-virus software does not necessarily offer full protection against trojans. The reason for this is simple. A virus is a very different thing to a trojan. Software for protecting your system from viruses is not protecting you from the very real threat of trojans.

Originally Posted by Grumpy John

This has led me to believe that it may be a good idea to swap between the top three (Avira, Avast and AVG) on a regular basis seeing as not all virus'/trojans/malaware is caught by all programs.
Regards
John

I agree with you John that one piece of software will not protect you totally against all attack on ones computer, however,of the three you mention, at present Avira has the latest and most up to date data base but of course will not protect against all nasties particularly Trojons as mentioned in my last post. A good, free package for the protection against Trojons is A squared and will give you much more protection against Trojons. Read about it and download from HERE