The popularity of the service on the other hand means that you sometimes have to wait in queue before your file gets scanned by Virus Total. Another limitation is the 20 Megabyte file size limit which is a bit on the low side of things.

Metascan Online is a new service that is an alternative to Virus Total. The online virus scanning service supports 19 different engines from companies such as Eset, Bitdefender, F-Secure, Clamwin, Symantec or McAfee. While that’s less than half the engines of Virus Total, it should still be enough to judge a file’s damaging potential.

The developers have increased the file size limit to 40 Megabytes so that even die hard Virus Total users can utilize the new search engine (for files larger than 20 Megabytes).

The antivirus scans work similar to the Virus Total scan. Just click the Browse button on the scan form to display a file browser window. Pick a file on the local system that you want scanned and click the Scan button afterwards.

The online scanner displays general file information at the top which include file size, type and md5 and sha1 hashes. Results are shown as graphics on the right after all scans have finished.

The individual engines and their results on the other hand are shown directly on the page. One interesting feature here is that the scan time of each individual engine is displayed here as well. Some scan times on the other hand do not feel right at this point in time, the 1ms of Quick Heal Scan Engine for instance or the 2189ms of Avira AntiVir Premium. Still, it is a nice feature in theory.

A search on the site can be used to look up md5 or sha1 checksums, which can be handy to find out more about a file without having it scanned first by the service.

There is however one aspect of the site that I’d like to criticize. If you visit the site with Chrome Dev or Firefox Aurora, you get a browser not supported page. That page does however list the browser version as supported.

The developers should take a look at their browser identification script and optimize it accordingly.

Metascan Online is a great alternative to Virus Total or No Virus Thanks despite that issue. It is definitely a site to bookmark. It would be nice if the developers would add missing features, like the ability to scan an online file, to the site.

Huge disadvantages exist nevertheless. Most if not all scanners do work solely in the Internet Explorer and require Active X  controls to be active. This could pose a security risk by itself and it is therefor advised to use those scanners as a last resort. Only a few scanners work with Firefox and none seem to work with Opera. On to the list:

Bitdefender (IE only)
Command on Demand (IE only)
eTrust (IE only)
F-Secure (IE only)
Kapersky (IE only)
McAfee (IE and Firefox)
Pandasoftware (IE only)
Symantec (IE only)
TrendMicro (IE, Firefox and Mozilla)