Antivirus protection is generally one of the must have software products if your computer is connected to the Internet. Commercial programs vary in their effectiveness and cost, but there are also some reasonably good free anti-virus programs available, if you look for them.
There are several organizations that test and rank these programs, one is http://www.av-comparatives.org/ and another is http://www.av-test.org/. It takes some time to study the comprehensive reports at av-comparatives.org, such as this anti-virus test PDF (their latest test as of the date of this post). Another series of anti-virus tests was journaled by pcworld.com in affiliation with av-test.org.
The other day I noted a link titled And The Best Antivirus Is…. The article is based upon a recent AV test report at http://www.virus.gr/.
As an aside, it’s curious to note the disparities between all three sets of AV software comparisons linked above. Back to virus.gr’s comparison.
Kapersky Lab’s product is listed as number one, and I’m not particularly surprised based upon previous test results I’ve seen, but the second best ranked product with the same percentage rating is AOL’s Active Virus Shield (AVS). AOL?
As another aside, here’s a different set of free security tools from AOL. Back to AVS. . . . . AOL’s End User License Agreement should give one pause regarding privacy. Will Active Virus Shield’s tool bar contain adware functionality at some point in time? If so, then my read of the EULA suggests the use of certain types of strict port-blocking stateful-inspection firewalls, unless they’re configured to allow AOL’s potential future ads, would be prohibited.
I decided to give AVS a try. (read more . . . )
