WARNING: Fails to detect even common viruses and Trojans! (AVG AntiVirus Free Edition)

Member Name: idoo2

Product:	AVG AntiVirus Free Edition
Date:	05/03/03 (9259 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: FREE!!!, Good, intuitive, easy-to-use interface, Multiple, useful functions

Disadvantages: Doesn't detect even common viruses!, Doesn't detect even common viruses!, Doesn't detect even common viruses!

Please carefully read the content of this review - I am concerned by the amount of positive reviews of this product. Even the most basic functions of an antivirus program (i.e. to actually detect viruses) fail to work in this program as it should. If it was a less important application I would not be worried. But as this product is an antivirus program, and viruses can and will destroy both yours and your friends' computer systems if they are allowed to do their heinous work, and this program that claims to detect viruses failed to detect even the most basic of viruses or Trojan horses on my system then no matter how free or easy-to-use a program is, it deserves to be slated. If it wasn't for the good interface of the program I would have given it only one star.

Let me recount to you my experiences...

How happy was I when I found a free antivirus program to download for free from the Internet. Being a student, this was a real Godsend to me. The worst thing that could happen to me in the middle of my studies was to lose an important dissertation or coursework because my computer was rendered useless by a nasty virus. And the last thing I wanted to do was to spend any more money that could be used elsewhere for other such important things that students require ;-)

So I eagerly rushed to the Grisoft website to download AVG Antivirus software,
marveling at such generosity in making such an important software application
available for free, and still wondering what the catch was, being quite skeptical in nature now - I have been caught out before by people offering things for free over the Internet only to discover later that their version of "free" was not the same as mine! An antivirus program for free? Surely no one could be that generous? And you know what they say about free lunches! (Incidentally, there is such a thing as a free lunch but it usually leaves a nasty taste in the mouth - much the same as my exper

ience with AVG. But more about that later!)

After downloading the software and installing it, I was quite surprised by the quality and robustness of the application - plenty of functionality - similar to what you would get with most paid for antivirus programs (in some cases even better!) and it worked well (apart from the virus detection, that is!)

Here is a list of some of the available functions in he free version...

* AVG Free scans the vital parts of your system such as boot files on each system
startup.

* Once your system is fully loaded "Resident Protection" monitors all files on your computer as they are saved so as to detect viruses before they do damage.

* The AVG Email Scanner (my favourite aspect of AVG Free) is an Outlook/Outlook
Express plug-in that scans all attachments sent and recieved by email, and appends a small, optional message to your emails certifying it as virus free.

* AVG On-Demand Scanner adds a menu to your Explorer right-click context menu
so that you can scan any individual file on your system at any time without loading up the full AVG program just by right-clicking on the file and selecting the AVG scan option on the contect menu.

* Basic Scheduled Tests allows you to automatically schedule when AVG Free scans
your system. My only problem with this is that your computer has to be on when the scan is scheduled - it won't remind you when you turn your computer to run the scan if you missed it. The paid-for version of AVG claims to have advanced scheduling but the website doesn't make it clear if this means automatically informing you of missed scan schedules when the computer is turned on.

* Free Virus Database. Updates is available through the Update manager. See below.

* Automatic Update feature. The download is simple and fast, you just click a button and the program downloads and installs the definitions aut
omati
cally. No restarting the program or system is necessary. Updates to the program are also downloaded with the virus definitions so you can always be sure of having the latest program version.

* Easy-To-Use Interface. I can concur with this. The whole interface is nicely
designed, smooth and a doddle to use.

* Automatic Healing of infected files. Well, as it has never identified a virus on my system I don't really know how (or if) this actually works. I presume it tries to rescue a file that has been infected with a virus however, I don't think this is always possible as even Norton acknowledges that this is not always successful. AVG doesn't admit this so I don't know if this means AVG is better than Norton in this respect or if they are just being economical with the truth!

* AVG Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files. Again, I have not been able to see this in action, but it?s there and it looks just as nice and easy to use as the rest of the program.

AVG Free allows you quite a degree of flexibility in customizing your scan settings. You can run a full system scan (choosing what type of files you want to include in the scan, including archived or compressed files, all extensions, just documents and programs, or you can add your own extensions to be scanned too). Scan methods include "integrity checking" (comparing the state of system areas and files with their image previously stored in a database) and "heuristic analysis" (analyzes the executable code and look for certain activities that are associated with computer viruses).

AVG Free does not come with Technical Support so you will need to upgrade to
AVG Professional if this is something you may require. Although the application
interface is so well designed and documented it is unlikely, in my opinion, you will need to ask for help with using the software.

Now that I have said all those ni
ce things
about AVG Free it is time to get back to what I previously said at the beginning of this review:

AVG FREE DOES NOT DETECT SOME OF THE MOST COMMON AND WELL-
KNOWN VIRUSES!

I have been using AVG Free for over two years trusting it to look after my system. But being skeptical by nature, I occasionally check my system using the free online virus scanner from the Symentac website (the best virus antivirus company in the world, in my opinion, whose virus definitions are used by the Norton program). You can imaging my horror when the online scan discovered two viruses on my system that AVG Free failed to detect. One of them was the been-around-for-ages, well documented Supernova Trojan horse commonly downloaded from Kazaa

Thankfully, for some reason, the viruses had not actually activated and infected my system and I was able to just delete the file and not have to worry about it anymore.

Of course, I am having to re-evaluate my cheapskate tendencies and considering
shelling out on a proper antivirus program like Norton.

If, like me, you're a desperate cheapskate and don't want to fork out for a proper antivirus program, then do yourself a favour and avail yourself REGULARLY of one of the online virus scanners such as the one on the Symantec website.

No matter how pretty, or easy-to-use an antivirus program is, if it doesn't detect the viruses, you may as well be trusting in the fairies to protect your computer system. I?d rather have much less of the fancy interface if it just found the viruses and removed them as it?s supposed to do.

Summary: