Ad-Aware Free Anti-Malware Utility from Lavasoft

Ad-Aware Free has long been one of the most popular spyware killers on the Web. It's simple to use, does an excellent job of detecting and killing spyware, and stays out of your way as much as possible. The fact that it's free for personal home use makes it affordable and attractive even more.

The newest version of Ad-Aware Free improves on an already solid product, notably by expanding its protection. At first glance, the program looks substantially the same as previous versions. Tell it to scan your system, and it finds spyware and other malware, and then deletes it or quarantines it for you. But even though it looks and works largely the same, under the hood there are a substantial number of changes, primarily aimed at beefing up system protection. Ad-Aware Free now protects against rootkits, which are stealth attacks designed to escape detection and burrow their way into the operating system. Ad-Aware also includes several types of heuristic detection, which protects you by examining complex system behavior, rather than just looking for known malware signatures. If the program's heuristics work as well as do the heuristics in other anti-malware software, it should provide better protection against emerging and unknown threats, as well as threats that are already known.

In addition, Ad-Aware Free promises to protect you against malware that tries to restore itself after a system reboot. And it now integrates with Internet Explorer to scan files as you download, alerting you to any malicious files you may send to your system.

Also new to this version of Ad-Aware is a "Simple mode" that lets you set your configuration once, and never have to do it again. If you prefer, you can toggle to Advanced Mode, where you can select advanced features for customization.

Note that Ad-Aware Free doesn't protect against viruses or provide full real-time protection. To get those features, you'll need an antivirus product. Lavasoft's for-pay products, the $27 Ad-Aware Plus and the $40 Ad-Aware Pro, include antivirus protection--though it's not yet clear whether those products are superior to their antivirus competition.

Main Features:

- Core Malware Protection
A power-packed combination of our pioneer anti-spyware technology together with rootkit protection and advanced Genotype detection to provide proactive malware protection, including protection against spyware, blended malware, trojans, rootkits, hijackers, keyloggers, and much more.

- Ad-Watch Live! Basic
Integrated real-time process protection blocks malicious processes and infected programs that try to start or run on your system, to prevent them from further integration in your system.

- Genotype Detection Technology
Based on heuristics, genotype allows Ad-Aware to stay one step ahead of today's ever-evolving threats, as well as threats that have not yet been created.

- Behavior-Based Heuristics Detection
Extra Sensory Protection allows you to go a step beyond detecting known threats — the heuristics detection finds and blocks unknown and emerging threats and stops deceptive malware and cyber thieves before they attack your personal information.

- Rootkit Removal System
Cutting edge anti-rootkit technology protects you from hidden threats and stealth attacks that are designed to gain access to your system by avoiding detection.

- The Neutralizer
Advanced removal tool combats malware that attempts to restore itself even after rebooting your system

- Download Guard for Internet Explorer
Most people are aware of the dangers and the risk when downloading files from the web. IE Download Guard provides an additional layer of protection that lets you download files on Internet Explorer confidently. If the file is malicious, you will simply be notified during the download process so that you can take action before any malware can infiltrate your system.

- Detect, Remove and Repair
Ad-Aware intelligently cleans your system by removing all traces of the infection.

- Minimal Strain on System Resources
Improvements to computer resource usage mean you have protection that doesn't slow your computer down.

- Easy to install & Use
We know not all users have the same needs, so we give you the power to decide how you want to interact with Ad-Aware.

- Simple Mode allows you to set and forget - by using our expert recommended settings, no interaction is needed from your part, making using the program as easy as possible.

- Advanced Mode lets you customize all the settings as you choose, to tailor everything to your specific needs.

- Lavasoft SmartSet
Let the experts at Lavasoft guide you. Lavasoft SmartSet makes scanning and cleaning as easy as possible — by providing settings for scans and recommended actions for found infections. All you have to do is set and forget.

- External Drive Scanning
Scan your external storage device, iPod, USB's, or any other drives that you connect to your PC for an additional layer of security.

- Pin-Point Scanning
Quickly identify whether a suspicious file is safe or malicious - Right click any file or folder to perform an immediate scan, or send it to ThreatWork Alliance for analysis.

- Automatic Updates
Continuous pulse updates to guard your privacy against cyber attacks.

Tech Specs

Processor: P600 MHz or better
RAM: Operating system + 100 MB
Hard Disk: 100 MB free space recommended
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit), Windows Vista (32 and 64-bit), Windows XP (32-bit), and Windows 2000 Pro.

Supported Languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, And Swedish.

Drawbacks:

- The software doesn't offer as many useful features as some other competitors. For example, it lacks the ability to schedule scans and the real-time monitoring isn't quite as effective.

- The quality of the technical support reported to be not very high.

- Running this program may slow down your PC. It constantly uses up to 10-15% CPU in background.

- The application occasionally misses spyware and adware which can be found by other utilities (however, that can be claimed for each of the competitive applications as well).

More information and downloading link from the developers Website: http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware - Great Tool to Keep your Computer Clean

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is a very popular among the user free anti-malware utility, which can be used to scan and remove Trojans, along with other malware such as viruses, worms, rootkits, dialers and spyware.

MalwareNET, which is Malwarebytes' online database, revealed that nearly 20% of the total objects detected by Anti-Malware were related to Trojans.

Other features of this program include multiple-drive scanning including networked drives, quick scanning, ignore list, quarantine to hold threats and restore them, context menu integration to scan files on demand, the FileAssassin option under the More Tools section for removing locked files, extra utilities to help remove malware manually, and settings to enhance performance of the program. It works together with other anti-malware utilities as well.

The software incorporates a number of new technologies that are designed to quickly detect, destroy, and prevent malware. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware can detect and remove malware that even the most well known anti-virus and anti-malware applications fail to detect. This assessment has been confirmed by many users throughout the Web, supported by the security experts’ opinion.

The installation process is fast enough, offering up the well-kept change log and an instant definition file update. The utility is very easy to use, with no complicated menus systems. You don’t have to hunt to find the tools you need. The scanning screen contains 2 simple options, quick scan, and a full system scan. The interface is completely intuitive and streamlined for simple navigation. Note, that software doesn’t require a system reboot when installing or updating.

However, real-time protection, scheduled scanning, and scheduled updating are only available to the pay version.

Main Features

• Support for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista (32-bit and 64-bit).
• Light speed quick scanning.
• Ability to perform full scans for all drives.
• Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Protection Module. (requires registration)
• Database updates released daily.
• Quarantine to hold threats and restore them at your convenience.
• Ignore list for both the scanner and Protection Module.
• Settings to enhance your Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware performance.
• A small list of extra utilities to help remove malware manually.
• Multi-lingual support (English, Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Latvian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian).
• Works together with other anti-malware utilities.
• Command line support for quick scanning.
• Context menu integration to scan files on demand.

Website: http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

Summary: I would definitely recommend to keep the software handy as party as your anti-malware destruction toolbox.

Free antivirus for Windows with anti-spyware protection: Avast! Home Edition

By all accounts, Avast! Free antivirus software is one of the best freeware utilities to save your computer from viruses and Trojans invasion.

This impressive software provides the same steadfast protection of well-known antivirus programs, yet it's surprisingly free.

Avast Home Edition guards your PC and the network with multiple shields that scan executables and files. You can select parameters for scanning, and even choose wildcards to exclude specific file types. You can adjust the sensitivity level for the program's detectors when it comes to scanning downloaded files, instant messages, e-mails, and a host of P2Ps. Its efficient interface opens up window after window to tweak its settings to your liking, for novice to advanced level protection.

Though it takes quite some time to run, the application's boot-time antivirus scan is quite impressive. If malicious contents are detected, Avast! comes to the rescue with handy virus cleanup tools. Some decent PC controls are even handed out here. You can block certain URLs and file operations, such as writing to files or even renaming, deleting or formatting them.

Main Features:

Anti-spyware built-in

Spyware is software installed on a computer that is designed to collect information about the computer user, often without their knowledge or consent. This can result in so called identity theft, or theft of valuable information (e.g. bank or credit card details) or proprietary business data. Spyware is often developed by organized crime rings rather than lone individuals and may be installed by a virus.

Certified by West Coast Lab's Checkmark process, Avast! has full anti-spyware capabilities built-in, to make your protection even more complete.

Anti-rootkit built-in

Rootkits are programs that install on your computer while keeping themselves and their activities hidden to remain invisible to the use. They represent a significant security risk on both home computers and company networks and are notoriously difficult to find and remove. Rootkits themselves are normally installed by a virus or other type of malware infection and it is therefore highly recommended that computer users have up to date antivirus/anti-spyware software installed and running on their computer. One such system is avast! antivirus.

Based on the class-leading GMER technology, Avast! can now scan your live system for rootkit infections; no boots disks are required. If a rootkit is discovered, it is initially disabled and then if it can be safely removed without affecting the performance of the computer, it is removed. Avast! antivirus includes a virus database which can be automatically updated to provide continuous protection against rootkits.

Strong self-protection

Some viruses may attempt to switch off a computer's antivirus software. To help keep your protection working, even against the latest threats that may try to disable your security protection, Avast! has best-in-class strong self-protection built in, to make sure, no matter what you face, Avast! carries on protecting your valuable data and programs. This is based on the multi-award winning Avast! antivirus technology and provides an extra layer of security to ensure your data and programs are always protected.

Antivirus kernel

The latest version of Avast! antivirus kernel features outstanding detection abilities, together with high performance. You can expect 100% detection of In-the-Wild viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses.

The kernel is certified by ICSA; and frequently takes part in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, often yielding the VB100 award.

The Avast! engine also features outstanding unpacking support. It can scan inside the following archives: ARJ, ZIP, MIME (+ all associated formats), MAPI (Outlook pst files), DBX (Outlook Express archives), RAR, TAR, GZIP, CAB, BZIP2, ZOO, ACE, ARC, LHA/LHX, TNEF (winmail.dat), CPIO, CHM, RPM, ISO, 7ZIP and SIS. It also supports a number of executable packers (such as PKLite, Diet, UPX, ASPack, PeShield, FSG, MEW etc.).

Last, but not least, it can also scan for viruses hidden in Alternate data streams on NTFS volumes.

Simple User Interface

The Simple User Interface is used to start on-demand scanning, work with the results and change various options. Basic resident protection settings can be modified here.

The Simple User Interface is the main application of Avast! 4 Home Edition. You can start additional Avast! modules from here, such as the Virus Chest, Updater or Log Viewer.

The appearance of the Simple User Interface is very flexible. It supports so-called skins, allowing users to change the appearance of the application interface. The main package contains three skins, with additional skins available from the developer web pages.

Standard resident protection

Resident protection (the real-time protection of the operating system), is one of the most important parts of an antivirus program today. Avast! features a powerful resident module that is able to detect a virus before it has any chance to infect your computer.

Avast! Home Edition contains resident protection of the computer file system and a resident module for e-mails and news.

File system protection ensures that no virus will be started on the computer. It offers a wide range of settings, such as the possibility to specify that files will be scanned during copying, or that the scanning will include files with given set of extensions only.

E-mail/News protection consists of two independent modules; first, there is a generic scanner working on the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4/NNTP protocol level. It is capable of protecting any existing e-mail client that uses these protocols. Second, there is a special plugin for MS Outlook only; the mail scanning is completely transparent, requiring no special settings.

A new feature of version 4 is heuristic analysis of e-mail scanners. This feature can protect against new, unknown viruses and worms that are not possible to detect by the usual means. The heuristic module performs a thorough investigation of every e-mail message and watches for suspicious signs, that might announce virus presence. When the number of those signs exceeds a user-defined level, the message is considered dangerous and the user is warned.

P2P and IM Shields

Avast features a module for the protection of IM (Instant Messaging, "chat") programs, and a module for the protection of P2P (peer-to-peer) programs. The list of supported IM and P2P programs is extensive with more than 30 programs currently supported.

While chat itself would not impose any serious security risks in terms of viruses, today's IM applications are far from being just chatting tools: most of them support more or less sophisticated file sharing methods - which may quite easily lead to virus infections, if not properly monitored.

The P2P protection module doesn't need much explanation - on today's P2P networks (such as Kazaa) there are thousands of infected files, and an effective protection is a must.

Network Shield

A new resident protection module was added to Avast! 4.5: the Network Shield. This module provides protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyses all network traffic and scans it for malicious contents. It can be viewed as a lightweight firewall (or more precisely, an IDS (Intrusion Detection System)).

The Network Shield is only available on NT-based systems (Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista).

Web Shield

Web Shield is a unique feature of Avast! that enables it to monitor and filter all HTTP traffic coming from the Web sites on the Internet. Since an increasing number of viruses (and other malware, such as adware, spyware and dialers) are being distributed via the World Wide Web, the need for effective countermeasures has also increased. The Web Shield acts as a transparent HTTP proxy and is compatible with all major web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mozilla and Opera.

Unlike most competitive solutions, Web Shield's impact on browsing speed is almost negligible. This is because of a unique feature called "Intelligent Stream Scan" that lets the Web Shield module scan objects on-the-fly, without the need of caching them locally. Stream scanning is performed in operating memory only (without the necessity to flush the contents to disk), providing maximum possible throughput rates.

Automatic updates

Automatic updates are another need in virus protection. Both the virus database and the program itself can be updated automatically. The updates are incremental, with only new or missing data downloaded: thus reducing the transfer heavily. The typical size of a virus database update is tens of KB; program updates are typically in the hundreds of KB range.

If your Internet connection is persistent, the updates are performed completely automatically at fixed time intervals. If you connect to the Internet only occasionally, Avast! watches your connection and tries to perform the update when you are online.

Having an up-to-date virus database and antivirus program is the most certain way to protect your computer.

Virus Chest

The Virus Chest can be thought of as a folder on your disk drive, having special properties that make it a safe, isolated place suitable for storing certain files. You can work with the files in the Chest, though with some security restrictions.

The main properties of the Virus Chest are complete isolation from the rest of the operating system. No outside process, such as a virus, may access the files inside, and the fact that the files inside the Chest may not be run (executable), there is no danger in storing viruses there.

System Integration

avast! antivirus features outstanding integration into your system. A scan can be started directly from Windows Explorer, by clicking a folder or a file with your right mouse button and selecting the corresponding choice from the menu.

A special screen-saver is also provided, that, when running, performs virus scanning. avast! antivirus works together with your favorite screen-saver, so you don't have to change your personal settings to use it.

A new option with this release is the boot-time scan (Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista 32bit only). This important feature allows a user to instigate scanning before a virus is activated, in the case that a virus is suspected to be active on your computer already.

Integrated avast! Virus Cleaner

Since version 4.1, avast! includes the Virus Cleaner, a tool designed for a complete removal of most common infections from already-infected computers. So now is avast! capable even to reliably heal (not only detect) the most common malware.

The number of viruses/worms supported by the Virus Cleaner is constantly growing. For the most up-to-date information it is recommended to visit Cleaner's own page (for emergency purposes we also offer the Virus Cleaner as a standalone product, capable of running without installed Avast!).

Support for 64-bit Windows

Avast! Home/Professional now fully supports the 64-bit Windows platform. ALWIL Software is anticipating massive take-up of this platform, as Windows XP 64-Bit Edition will support up to 32 GB of RAM and 16 TB of virtual memory, enabling applications to run faster when working with large data sets. Applications can preload substantially more data into virtual memory, allowing rapid access by the 64-bit extensions of the processor. This reduces the time for loading data into virtual memory or seeking, reading, and writing to data storage devices, making applications run faster and more efficiently.

Regular (32-bit) antivirus applications are unable to operate correctly on the 64-bit Windows platform because they rely on 32-bit kernel-mode drivers. The new avast! uses native 64-bit drivers, delivering the same level of protection as in the 32-bit Windows environments. The installation package is the same for 32-bit and 64-bit versions - the setup program automatically detects the operating system it is running on, and installs all necessary files.

Internationalization

Commitment to internationalization is one of the key benefits of Avast! During the last 2 years, Avast! has been translated to a number of languages and the latest version added additional language modules. Currently the list of supported languages is: English, Bulgarian, Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

Download the software from the developers Website: http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-free-home-antivirus-antispyware.html