Scanning the computer from an online location provides several advantages over the classic local scan. The most prominent one is that the risk of a virus infection of the virus scanner is not present and that the engine used by the scanner is usually up to date. A local virus scanner needs to be updated regularly to stay effective.
An Internet connection is needed on the other hand to perform the scan which sometimes can be a problem if the system is not booting into the operating system. A Live CD could help but many Online Virus Scanners demand the Internet Explorer which is obviously unavailable on Linux systems.
Online Virus Scanners can be used to get a “second opinion” without having to install another anti-virus software on the computer. It is probably a good idea to use as many of the virus scanners as possible if it is suspected that the system was infected by a virus. Below is a list of services that provide access to online virus scanners.
Bitdefender Online Scanner – requires Internet Explorer 4+
Eset Online Scanner – requires Internet Explorer
F-Secure Online Scanner – works only with Internet Explorer 6+
Kaspersky Free Virus Scan – browser independent, downloads roughly 25 Megabytes of files prior to scanning. User can select locations to scan. The scanner does not remove infected files.
McAfee FreeScan – requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5+
Microsoft OneCare Live – requires Internet Explorer.
Panda ActiveScan – requires Internet Explorer or Firefox, does not run in Opera.
Shields Up! – browser independent but very slow and unresponsive currently.
Symantec Security Check – down or gone.
Trendsecure HouseCall – Java based scanner, works with Java compatible browsers.
Windows Security – Trojan scan that requires Internet Explorer 5+
File Scanners:
Avast Online Scanner – file size limit of 512 Kilobyte
Virus Scan – file size limit of 10 Megabyte.
Virus Total – email upload option, 10 Megabyte file size limit.
Do you know any other services where users can scan files or the computer ?
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virustotal is rather good, email option mentioned in list but it also has small utility for submitting file from context menu. It recently got search by hash, this allows to look up results for file without having to submit it at all.
List of engines it is using is close to overkill. Good for paranoia but few of them seem to consider suspicious pretty much anything executable – that scares people.
martin, what would you say is a good anti-virus for Vista ?
I’ve got some more options to add to the list of individual file scanners:
Multi-engine scanner – Jotti: http://virusscan.jotti.org/
Single-engine scanner – Dr. Web: http://online.us.drweb.com/
I personally use one (or more) of the following, as they are *multi* engine scanners: VirusTotal, VirScan, or Jotti.
Enjoy.
I don’t believe Shields Up! is a virus scanner. I thinks it’s a site that tests a PC’s anonymity on the net.