Malware, Spyware, Adware and Antivirus Protection

 Malware, Spyware, Adware and Antivirus Protection

“I don’t need an Antivirus program,” you say. “I don’t have anything important on my computer. I just share social media posts with my friends and watch cat videos.” Let’s suppose that’s true, that you’re not forgetting the occasional log in to your bank, or to your email account. You could still find your social media accounts take over by malware. A bot could enlist your computer into a zombie army to spew spam or participate in a DDoS attack, and those extra tasks could make your cat videos laggy. Ransomware could lock up your computer entirely—no more social posts for you! In truth, you probably do use your computer for important activities, activities that malware could disrupt. You need Antivirus protection that’s up to date. If yours is outdated or absent, don’t worry. We’ve put more than 40 antivirus tools through testing and evaluation, so you can pick the one that’s best for you.

We call it antivirus, but in truth, it's unlikely you'll get hit with an actual computer virus. Malware these days is about making money, and there's no easy way to cash in on spreading a virus. Ransomware and data-stealing Trojans are much more common, as are bots that let the bot-herder rent out your computer for nefarious purposes. Modern antivirus utilities handle Trojans, rootkits, spyware, adware, ransomware, and more. As noted, PCMag has reviewed more than 40 different commercial antivirus utilities, and that's not even counting the many free antivirus tools. Out of that extensive field, we've named four Editors' Choice products, honored others with a four-star rating, and bestowed 3.5 stars on several more. If you have malware, one of the products listed in this article should take care of the problem.

Some nonstandard commercial antivirus utilities proved effective enough to earn an excellent four-star rating alongside their more traditional counterparts. VoodooSoft VoodooShield bases its protection on suppressing all unknown programs while the computer is in a vulnerable state, such as when it's connected to the internet, and also acts to detect known malware. The Kure resets the computer to a known safe state on every reboot, thereby eliminating any malware. These are interesting approaches, but not directly comparable with traditional antivirus tools.

These commercial products offer protection beyond the antivirus built into Windows 10; the best free antivirus utilities also offer more than Windows does. However, Protegent Antivirus Security Center is looking better and better lately, with some very good scores from independent testing labs. The combination of good lab scores and a great score in our hands-on malware protection test was enough to bring it up to 3.5 stars. It doesn't appear in this roundup of commercial antivirus products, naturally.