It seems like Grisoft, the developers of AVG Anti-Virus, are giving away a copy of AVG 7.5 Professional for free in a promotion that ends January 17th. The retail price for this product is $29.95 for a one year subscription. There is no word on the page with the offer for how long it will be possible to update the software to the latest professional version.

Categories: Operating Systems, Security, Windows

I have been using Antivirus software for a very long time and even though I kept it up to date it never catched a single virus, worm or Trojan. It did however slow down system startup and the scan of new files also used system resources. This let to my conclusion that I did not need a Antivirus software, because frankly, Antivirus software is basically preventing the user from doing something stupid.

Categories: Security

I was looking for a way to automatically scan specific file types immediately after finishing the download instead of scanning them when unpacking or executing them. This way I could sort out malicious files immediately without having to worry about some files that contain viruses or other sorts of malware sitting on my hard drives for a longer period of time.

Categories: Browsing, Firefox, Tools

We all known that quite a few spammers make big bucks by offering software like antivirus, antispyware or hard drive utilities whose main function is to either spy on the user or spam him. Those products are quite common nowadays and it is difficulty for an inexperienced user to remove the software completely again.

Categories: Operating Systems, Tools, Windows

Do you know that your anti-virus solution is working ? You could try to test your anti-virus program against the EICAR (European Expert Group for IT-Security) test file to see if it reacts the way it should. All you need to do is create the testfile and scan it with your virus scanner. If the scanner detects something it is working as intended, if it does not you should consider changing immediately to a more reliable one.

Categories: Security

I received some emails in the last days of visitors to my site who thought that AVG free would cease to exit on 15. of January 2007. I would like to clear the confusion right away by saying that on this date support for AVG free 7.1 will end but AVG free 7.5 by Grisoft will be available and support is guaranteed. Or as the Grisoft themselves announced it:

Categories: Operating Systems, Tools, Windows

AntiVir is probably the best free antivirus software. It´s free for non commercial use and updates its virus definitions regulary just like in the professional version. The free version however has the habit to display a advertisment popup after each update, which normally means that you see this ad every single day. It is always the same ad and I don´t see a reason for this at all, once is fine but everyday ?

Categories: Security

Everyone seems to favor a different antivirus software and its hard to make a choice because of this. A little test from the guys at overclockers.com might help you in your decision. They tested Desktop and Online Antivirus solutions and give recommendations at the end.

Categories: Security

Astalavista Security Group have a beta page up that lists top freeware software products in various categories including Data Recovery, Anti Virus-Tools, Firewall and IDS and Anti-Spyware. The list contains some of the freeware tools that I already wrote about but also some new ones that might interest you.

Categories: Tools