Sometimes you do not want to or cannot install another security software on your computer system to scan for malware. Maybe you do not have the rights to install software on the computer or you have a program installed and do not want to risk incompatibilities. The alternative is an application like F-Secure’s Online Scanner [...]

Categories: Online Services, Security, Spyware

Recently I came into a client who had a Windows XP machine that contained a nasty little virus that rendered the machine nearly unusable. When the machine would boot the CPU was pegging out at 100%, causing the GUI to be nearly unresponsive. I attempted to run AVG, Avast, Malwarebytes – but all for naught. [...]

Categories: Advice, Linux, Open Source, Security, troubleshooting, Tutorials Basic, Windows

No Virus Thanks is another web service that provides options to scan files with multiple anti-virus detection engines. It pretty much works like other web services of its kind like Virus Total by providing an upload form on the website which can be used by the user to upload a file to the service. The [...]

Categories: Online Services, Security

I was not able to find a lot of test results about CA Anti-virus 2008 on the Internet (Zdnet has one that includes spyware protection, here is a second) but it seems to be a solid antivirus software, not the best and not the worst. The offer itself is interesting. You do get a free [...]

Categories: Security, Windows

Virus Total is one of the many services that let you upload files to their server which are then scanned for viruses and malware. One major advantage of Virus Total over a single antivirus solution installed on the user’s pc is the fact that it uses almost every known antivirus engine to scan the files which could not be done on a single system because those applications would surely interfere with each other.

Categories: Operating Systems, Security, Software, Windows

I’m not that fond of online virus scanners because they always need special file access privileges and scan your files which could be a privacy issue as well. Infected or Not from Panda Antivirus however catched my attention by providing interesting statistics about infected computers on a worldwide and country wide scale.

Categories: Security, Spyware, The Web

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