Avast Free Antivirus is one of the best free antivirus software programs you can download. It’s a complete tool that protects against threats from the internet, email, local files, peer-to-peer connections, instant messages, and much more. In fact, it outdoes its competitors to a pretty significant extent.
With all of these features, you might wonder what you’ll have to fork over to pay for it. Fortunately, it’s completely free!
Avast Description: Important Features
Avast’s no-cost AV program includes fully functional antivirus, antispyware, and heuristics engines. There’s also real-time protection of files, email, web surfing, and suspicious behavior. It scans browser plugins, too, to find installs that have a poor reputation and may be malicious.
On-access protection from viruses and other malware.
Includes a “heuristics engine.”
Silent mode feature to hide alerts.
Long history of excellent virus protection.
Really customizable.
Grab a free trial of Premium Security.
Can turn off the features you don’t want during setup (or later).
No commercial use (home/personal only).
Tries to install unrelated software.
Shows ads within the program.
Doesn’t hide the non-free features.
In fact, right after the program is installed, before you can even fully use it, it runs an initial check called a Smart Scan. It doesn’t take long, and it checks for browser threats, viruses and malware, and other things like DNS issues. You can trigger this sort of scan to run on a schedule if you’d like.
The Behavior Shield feature keeps a constant eye on your applications to make sure they don’t start to act differently, which could be a sign of a virus attempting to manipulate the software. The other shields include File, Web, and Mail, and each can be customized to your liking, like to block specific websites, scan files when they’re being opened, scan inbound emails.
Wi-Fi Inspector scans your network to find vulnerabilities, such as identifying routers that are using default passwords and checking if your network is accessible from the internet.
A feature called Do Not Disturb Mode will block pop-ups and Windows updates while any program is in full screen mode. This is great so that you don’t see update or virus alerts while presenting something or playing a live game.
Blocking apps is allowed to protect yourself from viruses they might have. Alternatively, you can stop the virus scanner from checking for threats in folders of your choice. If there are files you want the scanner to avoid, you can add those to the exclusions list, too.
A great way this program protects itself is by letting you set a program password. Doing so prevents other people from making changes like turning it off.
At any time, you can open your statistics from the menu for an overview of every way Avast’s software has been protecting you. See total attacks prevented, files scanned, threats quarantined, and more.
Some other things we like are the options you can set for each virus scan type: full scans, targeted scans, File Explorer scans, and boot-time scans. For example, Avast can check for potentially unwanted programs, follow links during the scan, test the whole file for threats, scan removable media, find rootkits, look for viruses on DVDs and CDs, scan startup programs loaded in memory, scan archives, scan only risky file extensions (like EXE and BAT), and turn off the computer automatically after a scan.
Don’t Believe the Rumors: Avast Is Free
Some users have stated that Avast Free Antivirus is not free or that it’s not a truly complete antivirus program. That’s simply not true; it’s a complete anti-malware tool.
Some of the additional benefits you get from purchasing Premium Security or Ultimate versions of Avast are the firewall, VPN, privacy, and spam protections, but you can get those features free from other programs if you want them.
So yes, Avast Free Antivirus provides constant virus protection, also called on-access or resident protection, for free. This means that it can completely replace antivirus software from companies like McAfee and Norton that charge for their software and for yearly access to updates.
Our Thoughts on Avast Free Antivirus
Avast’s free antivirus has been around a long time and is, overall, an excellent option. It includes just about everything you’d ever want from an antivirus program, free or otherwise. It’s the only anti-malware tool you’ll need on your computer.
You can see how Avast’s software compares with antivirus programs from other companies—in protection, performance, and usability—from AV-TEST.
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