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Today’s internet safety is difficult to assess. Whereas the internet of yesteryear was a bit like the Far West, where only adventurous spirits wandered into the unknown, it’s a completely different picture today with social media, smartphones, two-factor authentication, and advanced security features such as SSL encryption.
Still, it’s not like cybercriminals decided to give up. Quite the contrary, their attacks and schemes get more sophisticated daily. The same goes for viruses, trojans, and all the malware floating around.
This is why Avast Free Antivirus is, more than ever, a valid, top-tier choice regarding online safety. Millions trust Avast Free Antivirus for this purpose, and perhaps you should, too.
The Need for Online Security
Let’s explore why it’s essential to have a top-notch online safety service nowadays. As we mentioned, online safety is a bit like an arms race. Robust solutions appear, and cybercriminals develop more sophisticated methods.
This is why a threat from a virus developed in the 1990s would be laughable today, but the virus Stuxnet can start a war on its own. And viruses are just a small portion of the malware we face each day.
Another dreaded threat is ransomware. This malware gets a hold of your documents, encrypts them, and then demands a ransom, generally in the form of cryptocurrency. Since you’re dealing with criminals, there’s no way to know if they’ll fulfill their promise to liberate your documents once you pay the hefty fee.
Phishing is another huge problem. Emails or other messages masquerading as a trustworthy platform that prompts you to input data are extremely dangerous. It can result in criminals having your passwords, usernames, credit card and bank information, and much more.
This is why trustworthy antivirus software that offers comprehensive protection against such attacks is necessary. With proper protection, your computer can get scanned to find threats. Proper software can also analyze files and software in real-time and much more.
By the way, these features are just some of what Avast Free brings to the table.
Avast Free Antivirus: A Leading Solution
There isn’t enough space in an article to highlight the many reasons why Avast Free Antivirus is a top choice, so we’ll share the best ones!
To start, the company is a staple in cybersecurity, with more than 30 years of experience. This enabled the team to have the largest threat-detection network in the industry.
We’ll detail some of the specific protection features of Avast Free Antivirus later on. First, one of the reasons for its success that’s not entirely related to safety is worth mentioning. And it’s Avast’s ease of use.
You can download the software and get it ready in just three simple steps, and afterward, you can simply let it manage things for you if you’re not tech-savvy. Computer requirements are minimal, too. You can use it on Windows 7 or higher.
Comprehensive Protection Against Online Threats
Before presenting them, it’s important to mention that the Avast Threats Lab uses Machine Learning algorithms to find and deal with new threats. That means Avast Free Antivirus not only scans your system regularly; it offers real-time protection, an invaluable ally.
Whether viruses, malware, spyware, phishing, and other nasty things, Avast has got you covered. Thanks to its real-time protection, your system is never left unchecked. The ML algorithms from Avast Threat Labs mean that AI can potentially identify unknown threats before they are recognized by anyone.
Unique Features of Avast Free Antivirus
Let’s now look at some of the most essential features Avast Free Antivirus offers.
A six-tiered security system
As you can imagine, you can’t tackle online security from a single angle nowadays. This is why Avast Free is comprised of protection from six different standpoints:
- Smart Scan: This powerful deep scan allows Avast to find threats and vulnerabilities on any system.
- CyberCapture: Once a threat is flagged, it gets sent to Avast’s servers for analysis. If it’s a threat, a cure is administered.
- Behavior Shield: If apps act strangely, it can be a reason for alarm. Avast detects this and gives you an alert.
- File Shield: Similar to the previous item, it checks suspicious files to give you an alert before you open them.
- Rescue Disk: This powerful feature allows you to check the computer for easier malware removal when the system isn’t launched.
- Quarantine: Any potential threat is isolated so it can’t affect the operating system.
Online safety features
Wait! There’s more! Because online safety isn’t just about malware, here are some other worthwhile features.
- Wi-Fi network security: This nifty feature allows you to connect to Wi-Fi networks safely by blocking hackers and other third parties. It even works on insecure public hotspots.
- Safe browsing and emailing: Avast prevents you from someone taking over your device when browsing the web or checking your emails.
- Ransomware protection: Thanks to its built-in protection features, it prevents unauthorized apps from messing with your files.
- Data leak alerts: Compromised passwords linked to your email address can become available to hackers. Avast checks if your information has been part of a data leak, prompting you to take action.
Advantages Over Other Solutions
The online protection market is a very competitive one. As such, many features are shared across different solutions, and it’s sometimes difficult to assess which one is better.
When it comes to online safety, the most important feature is how protected you are. This is an area where Avast excels. According to AV-Test, an independent German lab that tests cybersecurity solutions, Avast detects an incredible 100% of 0-day and older threats. Other tests have shown over 99% of accuracy.
In terms of real-time protection, it managed to identify 99.98% of all threats, with just ten false alarms. Top Reputation among Users and Industry Experts
Regarding protection and practicality, Avast Free Antivirus is an incredible choice supported by users worldwide. For instance, TV Guy Jay mentions, “I've been using Avast now for many years. My I.T. guy suggested the free version for our company, before hacking was as prevalent as it is today. Since that time, Avast has grown to be a robust fully protective software, and is worth the few hundred dollars we spend for VPN, virus protection, tracker blocking and more.”
Others highlight the availability of top protection for both Apple and Windows machines. Eric S. says, “Thank you, Avast, for the excellent work you do. I run your antivirus software on both my Mac OS X and my Windows machines. You have the best products on the market, period.”
Myra Auston has been a loyal Avast customer for more then 10 years, and for good reason: “I love Avast: It is free, smart, and takes care of my (historic) computer lol. It runs silently in the background and updates when it needs to. I have been using it on all my devices, Which is fantastic. Not normally a problem with it at all. My daughter once tried to put McAfree, and had nothing but problems with it. I tried calling their help number but was NO help. I don't have one problem with Avast. It is great!!!! Good job everyone!!!!!”
Get Avast Free Today
If you aren’t yet using Avast Free, you should get it right away! You’ll be joining millions who have confirmed from first-hand experience everything mentioned in this article. Afterward, you can sit and relax, knowing your data and computer are safe.
Summing Up
We went into a lot of detail in this article, and hopefully, you’re better informed on what online threats are lurking and what to do about them. As you can now understand, tackling these issues is a multidisciplinary approach.
Thankfully, Avast Free Antivirus offers protection against all kinds of cyberthreats and, as an industry leader, is at the vanguard of innovation.
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@Martin Brinkmann: with all due respect, this is now such a basic function, esp. for people reading your articles, that this article is like explaining to the readers how to calculate 1+1.
Yes, I have to agree with this. I can’t imagine that there are many spreadsheet users who are computer literate enough to even casually read ghacks, but don’t know how to use a SUM function.
@Klass Vaak & Herman Cost
Ever thought that people might google it so this artice might show up in the search results. So..no it’s not useless. I think it’s a good strategy explaining stuff even if it’s just basic things. Every day there is a new user on the internet searching for this kind of tutorial.
@Malte: you make a good point, in principle. Nevertheless, nowadays telling people how to do a sum calculation, the simplest of the simple, in a spreadsheet is like teaching grandma to suck eggs.
If say an elderly person would be sitting in front of a spreadsheet wondering how to sum a number of cells, that person is unlikely to look it up on internet, but would ask one of her/his children.
And in any case, Ghacks is not a spreadsheet tricks and tips site, so it would not show up high in the ranking in a Google search.
I`m an elderly person. 71.
My experience in computers spans 50 years, focused on Unix internals, advanced degrees.
I look to the internet for answers, since my children hate me and wouldnt tell me “jack”, even if they knew the answer.
I dont know how to “suck eggs in principle”, or anything else for that matter. I’m retired and not interested in learning. Some other guy learned “the theory of sucking things.”
Never needed spreadsheets, always too darn busy. Thanks for this info. Now I know how to sum two cells.
Everyone starts somewhere.
I am an elderly person and I can use sum, sumif, sumifs and so on. My kids come to me for knowledge on how to use excel and other programs ;)
But then, I was in IT my entire career before I retired :)
There are basic sites, and there are advanced sites. GHacks used to be more for people with technical knowledge. You can’t be everything to everyone though that seems to be the trend these days. Since it’s all about clicks and click bait the wider the topics the more you can remain “relevant”…
However, that mentality tends to alienate the more technical people. I find myself spending less time here every month. It won’t be long before I stop coming here altogether.
I have no mobile or wireless technology.
Anything google or apple is insidious to me. And that accounts now for most of the content here.
As to this article. Avast, and all of their products are untrustworthy. There has been much controversy and negativity regarding their products. I would think a reputable site would be more careful in what they publish… err, sorry, advertise.
@Klaas Vaak: In Martin’s defense, it’s the day after Christmas, and some eggnog recipes pack a *real wallop*. Maybe we’re lucky he could type at all. ;-) More seriously, I don’t use Calc super-often, I typically type in the =SUM() function manually, and I’d actually *forgotten* where the Σ button is located in Calc. (The last time I was a heavy spreadsheet user, it was in an older version of Excel and I’m pretty sure the Σ button was somewhere on one of the “regular” toolbars.) So, the article actually did have a small payoff for me. Plus, there might be other intermediate or advanced users of other types of programs (graphics, audio, video, word-processing) who have never used a spreadsheet in their lives. It’s kind of hard to imagine, I know, but it’s possible.
You were not born with the knowledge you have now. You once had to learn too.
So get down off your high horse, grow up and show a little respect for others who need details.
Overall LO has become a good SW, what prevents me to use it is:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Calc/XMLSource
“it will not store the information about the data source once the data is imported”
Until that functionality is implemented I’m forced to use M$ Office (2003).
@SpywareFan: an interesting alternative for M$ Office is Softmaker’s FreeOffice.
@Klaas Vaak
I have the Softmaker’s Free Office Suite in my computer – – and I LOVE IT!
intelligencia
In the FreeOffice manuals there is no reference to XML data mapping functions.
Another vote for Softmaker’s Free Office, a very nice alternative to MS Office.
Yes, I use functions in Calc: Average, Min and Max. I use the mouse to select the cells.
I don’t usually have to use Sum.
Thanks for the info, and could we have more tips for LibreOffice?
I find that the documentation does not keep up with the changes in LibreOffice.
Also, it is hard to find info in the help documentation.
Thanks Martin for all your great work you put in to make our live easier. Have a nice and healthy 2021.
To all those complaining about this being a simple ‘101’ function: it’s Martin’s blog, he can write a deep-dive review of Windows Calculator if he so wishes. Do you pay his salary or something?
@ShintoPlasm: yes, it is Martin’s blog, but it is a public blog with a comments section, which means he invites people to comment. And having been an avid reader for several years now, I am pretty sure Martin does not expect commenters to agree with him all the time.
You do not help him with agreeing with everything willy-nilly and “honouring” him with praise. Martin, like everyone else in the world, is not perfect, therefore he can only learn from constructive criticism.
Unfortunately you look at constructive criticism as a complaint. I do not agree with you on that and will keep making constructive criticism because I believe in keeping this website one of the best ones – refraining from constructive criticism won’t do that.
Absolutely. People could rather than leaving constructive criticism just stop visiting the site. How is that in the best interest of the site’s authors?
A new way to sum with the latest version is to place the cursor under the numbers to be summed, then press Alt-=, then ENTER.
The SUM function doesn’t work. It just keeps putting the same total no matter what figures I enter.
I would like to know how to make the sum function work. I know how it should work and it works in excel. But when I put the sum function in, it will not make changes when I edit and change the data, the total remains the same
Ditto, Marty. Everyone starts somewhere. Thanks.
Instead of being snarky, maybe you could be helpful. I’d like to add two numbers in a cell;
In Excel, it would be
=5+6
I try that in this piece of crap software, and get a message “Invalid value.”
I used Excel a lot when I was working. Retired now seven years. Excel was great, especially for macros. I now use LibreOffice, which works similarly but the macros are difficult in comparrison to Excel. I couldn’t find anything on macros for Free Office, which was disappointing, so I uninstalled it. I find Zoho to be the most similar to Excel but there you’re stuck with your spreadsheets in the cloud which I didn’t like.
Um… When was this article posted? The date says today (August 23, 2023), but I’m seeing comments from 3 years ago.
I was going to amuse myself and check out the comments for this Avast AV sponsored post since there were so many comments. I thought it funny since they have an article bashing the product in 2019.
What do I see when I go to the comments? Ghacks pulled an “Amazon” and replaced an article on Excel SUM functions with a sponsored post to make it look like a good article.
Anyone and everyone who even has a clue about tech knows that Avast is utter garbage and focuses on spying on you and spamming you with ads these days. Just check out the bad article from 2019 on this very site! If you run Windows 10/11, you already have better antivirus than Avast built-in to Windows.
@graham
surely more importantly is why an ad for dodgy anti-virus has the whole thread on office suites instead.. something in the db is messed up.
On a slight tangent, does foobar2000 have a built in lyrics plug in? I mostly used Linux and Deadbeef, the closest alternative to Foobar there has a very old(and kinda broke) plug in.
If you want news then add this line in uBlock Origin:
ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
@News filter,
> ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
Thanks for the useful information.
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin.
Magnificently,
I was able to clean up “all articles” by other authors on the Ghacks site.
It’s refreshing to be able to see only useful articles (instead of being buried among inferior articles) by clearing out the obtrusive articles.
Important note: changing policies through the program doesn’t save them automatically. You need to hit Ctrl+S (or go to File > Sve Policies)
What silly click bait article. Even the actual article is ridiculous.
“The launch of HarmonyOS for PC could pose a serious threat to Windows.”
Who cares what people in China use.
Don’t do drugs before working maybe.
What’s next? Look up the biggest Android fork in China and write pointless long article about it how it’ll take over Google’s Android.
HarmonyOS and Excel comments are mixed up.
HarmonyOS is not an open-source OS, only partially components.
P.S.
What is happening with these comments from other articles?
this is funny. it looks like the same base article, comments and all has been repurposed and edited or something for 3 (or more) different articles.
started off as something for some office suite… and then it was some antivirus thing.. and now it’s some iffy os.
wtf is that writer doing? no one reads or comments on the ad articles and he has to reuse old ones to make it look like it’s getting traction? (though it shows up as 0 comments on the homepage, so that can’t be it?)
“HarmonyOS does not have Google. Huawei’s HarmonyOS is a proprietary operating system..”
vs
“HarmonyOS is open-source, which means that it can be customized by developers and manufacturers.”
Both are quotes from the article. So which one is it, open source or proprietary?
Without windows-based videogames able to run, it’ll stay niche.
Huawei better put serious money into a harmonyOS port of Wine, DXVK or Proton if it wants its machine being more than web browsing thin clients.
I won’t trust a foreign OS.
Deeply foreign, I meant. In so many ways.
“I won’t trust a foreign OS.”
You trust Microsoft Windows, Google Android and Apple operating systems just because they are from businesses in your country ? Talk about blind nationalism.
Do not forget also that there is a world outside of USA and that for most of human beings, your favorite operating systems are also of a foreign origin, and as hostile towards them as they are towards yourself.
HAHAHAHA – did you really say “it could pose a serious threat to Microsoft’s Windows operating system”?
It won’t run programs or real games, so it will be useless.
I mean, there are some people who apparently love using tablets and phones for everything, but mostly are people who will barely do anything with their brain in life.
I mean, even if Photoshop, and others are available for iPad, do people think iPad is a threat for windows? not really, maybe for useless consumers who will just, like with a phone, be happy and move on, but not for professional industries which are the ones who matter the most, because are the ones who generate more revenue, since they buy the most expensive hardware and software.
Nothing consumer computing related really makes much money, unless it is data from users that get sold for AI or Ads.
Who knows where this comment is going to wind up. It’s in response to the article about Huawei’s HarmonyOS (HOS) operating system.
Two places in the article it says HOS is open-source. One place the article says HOS is proprietary. Uh, I’m pretty sure it can’t be both. Which is it? If there’s some fine distinction, somebody needs to explain it.
After all of these issues with Ghacks articles and misplaced postings, I’m reminded of this
https://www.ghacks.net/2019/10/07/ghacks-has-a-new-owner-and-that-is-a-good-for-everyone/
@vanp,
Note: I replied to you on September 6, 2023 at Around 2:20 pm, but it was still remain blocked after more than half a day, so I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and reposted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
Regarding “Huawei’s HarmonyOS” you asked about, the developer has stated that it is planning to open source, however the actual situation has been shelved (no such movement).
HarmonyOS – Wikipedia
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS
Therefore, it is “proprietary software”.
Moreover, both the company and its production base are in China. China, Russia, Israel, etc. are “Authoritarian state” and products and companies based in those countries are under state control, and privacy policies can become “famous and innocent.” Those products should be avoided.
Correction of sentence
Before correction: “famous and innocent.”
After correction: “nominal name only titular.”
owl, thanks again for the great info.
HarmonyOS doesn’t run Windows apps. It is no threat to Windows.
I agree.. i bet it cant even run wallpaper engine, it probably has the worst compatibility with software.
iam vary satisfied this work
http://crackscoop.com
ah, wonderful, this message/article cross-posting hasn’t been fixed.
Ignore my comments.