#AVAST FREE ANTIVIRUS FOR WINDOWS 7 PC FOR FREE#
#AVAST FREE ANTIVIRUS FOR WINDOWS 7 PC SOFTWARE#

It scored the highest of all our recommendations in threat detection. Bitdefender Antivirus Free Editionīitdefender Antivirus Free Edition is developed and maintained by a Romanian company founded in 2001.

#AVAST FREE ANTIVIRUS FOR WINDOWS 7 PC SOFTWARE#

When considering the best free options, the factors we considered, in order of priority, wereĪll of our recommendations are developed by reputable companies, light on system resource usage, capable of detecting at least 99 percent of post-zero-day threats that paid software is capable of detecting, with minimal intrusions prompting the user to upgrade. Others, like Qihoo, have been around since 2005 but are still prone to unethically cheating AV-Comparatives tests - by supplying a custom scanner that used a Bitdefender engine - even after Anonymous Analytics, a division of the Anonymous hacker collective, published a 2013 paper revealing that they regularly overstated volume of traffic in order to attract advertisers.įinally, some products themselves are outright malware - Anvisoft’s founder was exposed to be none other than elite hacker Wicked Rose, leader of the Chinese state-sponsored hacker group NCPH. NQ Mobile, for example, inflates metrics to enhance perception of legitimacy to further their ulterior motive of distributing spyware - malware that enables a user to covertly steal your data. Installing a free antivirus product is only practical if it’s from a reputable company. Because of this, free antivirus programs are more than ideal - they take up less disk space and consume less resources (paid offerings tend to include non-antivirus components such as a firewall and internet security).

Since the learner population you deal with consists mostly of low-income users, chances are their computers are not that fast. (Antivirus software relies upon patterns of signatures to identify malware for inclusion in virus definitions.) The benefits of paying for antivirus typically include telephone technical support, parental controls, and a much better detection rate of zero-day malware - threats whose signatures have yet to be analyzed because they are so new. Nowadays, not only are free antivirus programs viable - market growth having spurred healthy competition among vendors to best each other’s lab test scores - we even recommend them over paid options for protecting your students’ computers.

Windows users gradually began forgoing paid subscriptions for their antivirus needs. Around the time Windows Defender replaced MSE on Windows 8, however, the scores started to suffer. It got so bad that in 2013, Microsoft itself recommended users use something else. Independent lab test scores increased with each passing month.

#AVAST FREE ANTIVIRUS FOR WINDOWS 7 PC FOR FREE#

Then, Microsoft released Security Essentials, included for free starting with Windows 7. Running free antivirus programs for assured protection was considered questionable. Back in the day, Symantec and McAfee were the industry leaders in providing paid antivirus solutions.

Avast free antivirus for windows 7 pc