Using the capabilities of the Internet is always fraught with a certain risk. Entire viral epidemics constantly appear on the network’s expanses, which a person who is far from computer technology may not even know about. But if you buy a computer and connect to the global network, the danger becomes more than real. Although malicious programs, better known under the term “viruses,” only affect software, nevertheless, stolen access codes to a bank account make them quite tangible.
A computer infected with a virus does not cough or sneeze, its temperature does not rise (although there are some that heat the processor). Anti-virus programs are used to protect against this scourge. Viruses can be divided into several main groups:
- fixing user actions, up to mouse movements and button clicks. The dialed secret codes, for example, for working with online banking operations, are transmitted through the network to the attacker's computer, so he gets full access to them;
- making the infected computer work as the virus writer wants. Botnets owe their appearance to this particular group;
- interfering with the normal operation of the system. This can be the creation of a large number of tasks that force the central processor to work in vain with a full load, etc.
In fact, this classification is more extensive, but to understand the dangers of these groups is more than enough. Not surprisingly, the question is constantly being asked on the network about what it is, “the best antivirus program.”
Those wishing to find an answer to this question in this article will immediately disappoint: there is no such program. If it existed, then all the rest would simply disappear. Therefore, everyone has to think about how to check the antivirus and select the most suitable for functional capabilities.
With the development of the Internet, classic antiviruses are becoming less and less popular, giving way to comprehensive protection programs - such harvesters that combine the function of checking network traffic and the anti-virus block. Very often they are called Security Suite. But even when using them, sometimes you need to learn how to check the antivirus.
There are a lot of such protection systems, so we list only the most popular ones: Kaspersky Internet Security, AVG Internet Security, Avira Internet Security, ESET Smart Security.
Users who have chosen any such software product have a logical question about how to check the antivirus. Once again we upset the reader: although such a check is possible, it is not worth placing great hopes on it. The network provides many overlapping recommendations on how to check the antivirus. They can, of course, be done and necessary, but, nevertheless, the best test is the real conditions of the Internet or studying the feedback of other users.
On eicar.org, you need to download a test file and scan it with antivirus. If a message about the detected malicious code is not issued, then you should think about changing the security program. Nevertheless, it is much more efficient to use special archive collections containing various viruses. You need to download the archive file, in which the viruses are in a packed form, and check it with an antivirus. A similar method is used when testing security programs, as well as for compiling performance reviews. We don’t provide a direct download link, because such archives are constantly updated and it is very easy to find them through regular search queries or in specialized forums. The main thing is not to run malicious files from the archive, but only to scan with antivirus.
You can also scan a known antivirus with a known infected disk or file. It is recommended to set the search settings for malicious code fragments to the maximum mode (paranoid).