Why You Should Avoid Free Antivirus Software

Everyone loves a bargain. A lot of personal computer users search for free anti-virus solutions for their computer's security issues. Many users look for free-trials to download and seem to have the mentality that all scanners are created equally. When the free-trial is over, the user moves on to the next free-trial, or even worse, they do nothing, leaving their computer susceptible to attack. I agree that the price of "FREE" sounds a lot easier on the wallet than the price of $49.99. What a lot of users tend to overlook, however, is exactly what they're getting for that fee. They neglect to see what they're missing out on when they settle for free anti-virus software.

When building a virus scanner, some steps will be skipped or overlooked when the program is going to be given out for free. It's very hard to be competitive or offer a quality product when you have no monetary income for that product. Your next question would likely be "What steps will be skipped and how important are they?".

First, let me start by saying most of the developers in the free anti-virus and free anti-spyware field have very limited time and resources to spend on their projects. Time and time again I find free anti-virus software that hasn't had an update added from the company in over 6 months. A plethora of new computer viruses are born in a week, let alone a lengthy six months. I'm sure you can imagine how large the field of unprotected threats are in these cases. The developers create a program with a decent framework (if you're lucky) and then have a lack of manpower, time and money to create consistent and effective updates.

These programs can effectively find some of the older, ancient viruses but leave your computer very susceptible to newer and more advanced viruses. The ones who suffer in these situations are the users who have faith that these products are up to date. If a virus scanner is going to be successful, it needs consistent updates from a team of researchers who can find and exploit the most recent threats in an ever-growing field of viruses.

The way the virus scanners themselves are made, is one of the biggest differences between free software, and high-quality award-winning software. All scanners are NOT created equally. Virus scanners are created to work in different ways. The common method of creation in free anti-virus software is what's called "pattern matching". The virus scanner will examine a file for a string of bytes that seems to have an anomaly within it.

Then, it will check to see if that anomaly matches any of the patterns in its database of known viruses. If there's a match, the file will be quarantined and/or deleted. It may also search for a wide variety of file names that are known viruses and then examine those files as well. While these processes may sound complicated and effective, in reality they're rather simple and a lot of times they can over look the more advanced viruses, leaving the computer still infected.

A few examples of advanced virus techniques are polymorphic and stealth viruses. Polymorphism is a technique that allows the virus to barely change its code and make copies of itself every time the virus infects, or re-infects a computer. This can give the virus many different appearances that "pattern matching" alone can't detect. Stealth viruses hide the modifications they make to files and boot records, making the file appear to be "clean" to a more simple scanner. These advanced viruses go unnoticed by a vast majority of the free anti-virus programs. To search for these viruses a scanner needs a much more sophisticated technique for inspecting. . The scanner has to process the files in a real-time emulation mode. The files are then evaluated for any noticed polymorhpic changes. Most all award-winning anti virus software will have the ability to detect a virus that uses a stealth or polymorphic technique.

One of the worst experiences is attempting to turn on your computer to find it's inoperable or your hard-drive has been erased. To have all of your software, documents, songs and pictures gone in a flash, Is a total nightmare. Many times the first step in these situations is calling a professional virus cleaner and hoping they can fix the problem. If you're lucky and they CAN help you then that method can cost you many times the amount it would have if you had simply bought a solid, trusted, virus scanner to begin with. If they can't help you then it's hard to replace all of the items you lost. I can't stress enough how important it is to use a quality, trusted anti-virus software for your computers security. The free scanners don't match up.