free-av

Has anyone used or have any information good or bad about this product? Thanks


http://www.free-av.com/

 

No, sorry I have not heard anything about Free-AV, but if you want really good free AV software, check out AVG Antivirus.

 

Personally, I have nothing but good to say about ZoneAlarm (free and downloadable!).

 

You may find this helpful.

Also, I have read several reviews all of which stated that AntiVir caused a significant number of false alarms.

 

ZAF is a firewall; not an AVP.

 

I am aware that it is a firewall, not an AV, but I sent myself a test virus and (much to my dismay) my AV missed it but ZA quarantined it! (If you can explain this, I would be indebted).

 

Your AVP looks to see whether or not a file actually contains a virus. ZA simply quarantines all files with a particular extension (for example, .vbs) irrespective of whether or not the file carries a virus. ZAF (I think) quarantines only .vbs files. ZAP quarantines 40(ish) file types.

You'll find more information here.

This is, to my mind, a fairly useless feature as you should never execute a file without first scanning it with an AVP.

I don't know what sort of dummy file you used to test your AVP, but you may wish to try with the EICAR test file and see what happens.

 

Thanks all for your input, especially Brett for a very informative link.


Jack

 

You're welcome, Jack.

If it's of any interest, I've used F-Prot for a number of years. F-Prot invariably achieves the best ITW Test scores of all the free AVP's ... and, in fact, it scores better than many of the pay-for products too!

It's purely an on-demand scanner and offers no real-time protection but, as I'm careful to always scan downloads and attachments before opening, this isn't a problem and I've yet to catch anything unpleasant!

ScriptSentry is also well worthy of a look.

 

And I also thank you for explaining my part to me!