Comparision of 5 Effective Free Antivirus for Home Use

Home Use Free Antivirus Programs

One needs to have antivirus installed in laptops and computers for securing them from viruses of different types. If you do not want to pay high fees for antivirus there are many antivirus available for free. These free antivirus are very effective too.

Many of these products are free for non commercial; products only, hence if you want them for your business, you have to opt for paid edition. Your antivirus should have the ability to root out existing malware and also prevent ransomware, botnets, Trojans and others.

Lets See How an Antivirus Actually Detect Malware:

There are data of known malware, downloaded from internet, that can actually identify a specific malware or group of malware. There are, also, pieces of code that are not expected to be found in a legitimate programs. These are detected by heuristic based detection. The unknown programs are executed by sandboxing and virtualization in a different environment so that antivirus engine can analyze and scan them. In the last procedure, the files in doubt are send to vendor’s machine that runs the cloud engine. This is called the cloud based detection. Internet connection is required for this.

How are Viruses Scan?

Manual scan/On demand scan is started by the user from the software or by right click in context menu. On access scan is used when the resource is being used. Startup scan or quick scan checks importsnt locations like system memory and services, startup items and so on. With scheduled scan the system remain free from malware.

Lets have a Look on Free and Effective Antivirus Available.

Comodo Internet Security Premium

PROS

  • It has industry based firewall with options for behavioural and learning blocker.
  • There are lots of options available for customization with setting tolerance against prompts.
  • It has multi layered protection scheme.
  • It provides clean user interface and graphical skins.
  • It’s tweaked settings gives the best 0 day protection.

CONS

  • The signature based detection and other Av modules are quite weak.
  • If you are a beginner, you will find it quite painful.
  • One has to use many tweaks for better protection.
  • Updates are released slow.
  • During default install, Geek Buddy, yahoo search, Chromodo browser and custom DNS are offered.

Qihoo 360 Total security

It is considered as best among others.
PROS

  • It has excellent customer services with fats replies.
  • It provides great detection rates and has zero day protection.
  • It has fast scan time and comes with pre configuration protection mode.
  • It comes with smooth running installer and many themes.
  • Has in house cloud protection.
  • It provides network threat blocking, online shopping protection and malicious URL protection.

CONS

  • It may encounter some false positives.
  • Avira engines is not enabled by default.
  • All versions do not have speedup and cleanup tools.
  • It needs to improve its PUP (Potentially Unwanted Programs)

Avira Free Antivirus

PROS

  • It scans the files deeply.
  • It is quite light on the system and does not slows down the system.
  • It provides the best cloud engine in form of Avira Protection Cloud.
  • It provides high quality signatures and fast updates.
  • Provides browser safety Add ons foe most of the browsers.
  • It has no pop ups or ads and clean ad free GUI and Ad free installer.

CONS

  • It has ineffective Browser launcher.
  • One needs to add multiple file exceptions.
  • Its zero day protection is very weak.
  • It does not provide sandboxing or firewall.
  • Usage of RAM and CPU is increased due to repeated scans.

Avast Free Antivirus

PROS

  • Avast is the only antivirus that has complete customizable installer.
  • It has clean and modern UI and is very light on system.
  • It blocks all unknown programs as it works best in hardened or lock down mode.
  • It provides excellent network protection, integrated password manager and malicious URL blocking.
  • It has Sandbox and safe machine component.

CONS

  • It lacks anti ransomware module.
  • The default setup us bloated and it shows some ads and pop ups.
  • You have to create an account for more protection after a month.
  • It needs to improve its malware signatures, HIPS module and cloud reputation.
  • During installation it offers Google chrome and various other secondary components.

Panda Free Antivirus

PROS

  • It has good detection rate and behavioural analysis program.
  • UI comes with customizable interface.
  • It provides good web protection.
  • Due to its cloud protection memory and CPU usage is less.
  • It’s hardware resource handling is quite good.

CONS

  • It is not light in installation and copying.
  • It has weaker offline protection as it depends on internet connection.
  • Its scanning speed is comparatively slow.
  • There is no fingerprinting.

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