Free antivirus software

looks at six free antivirus programs that will help keep your PC safe from harm

T here is no excuse for not having antivirus protection on your PC. None. And don’t say you don’t need to bother, because you have Microsoft Security Essentials installed by default. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) has been shown to pay little more than lip-service to virus protection. You need a third-party service on your PC and there are lots to choose from, led by the six we look at here.

The good thing about having a free product from one of the leading Internet Security (IS) companies is that they use the same AV engine as in their commercial products. What you get is a smaller feature set. Few include spam filtering, improved firewalls or parental controls.

The free offerings from Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender and Panda all fit this bill, yet all offer basic antivirus and anti-malware protection, giving you a good chance to keep your computer free of threats that could lose you data and take a lot of time to put right. Qihoo goes further and offers pretty much a full internet security suite.

With the wider range of devices we are using for computing, the increased provision of ‘dashboards’ that show the different products installed on your Windows, Android, Mac and iOS devices can be useful.

AVG’s recent publication of its privacy policy, showing what rights it takes over your personal and non-personal information when you download and use its free product, has caused a furore. You grant it the right to send some of your information to third parties, which may include advertisers.

Some have said that this is just AVG being more upfront about its policy, so we had a look at what each company says in its privacy policy. They’re not all the same: some require you to opt out to prevent sharing – and AVG says it will offer this – some ask you to opt in, but will respect your decision if you don’t, and some don’t share your information at all with third parties.

Best is Bitdefender, which claims not to share information with anybody outside its own company or subsidiaries. We think this is as it should be with a security product, but second-best is the assumption not to share, with an opt-in, should you want to receive ‘relevant’ offers. This is what Avast, Avira and Qihoo do. Panda does the same as AVG, requiring you to specifically unsubscribe to avoid security-related emails.

IS software is designed to prevent damaging apps from infecting your computing device. All the free products here do that. As a secondary task, though, the full commercial products should reduce the amount of unwanted advertising and offers that get through to you. Taking rights to inject still more of this spam into your computing life seems disingenuous at the very least.

So here are the leading six free antivirus applications, proving you really can get something for nothing, it appears.