AVG Internet Security 2012

In recent years, AVG has branched out a bit from its antivirus and security suiteorigins. The company now offers PC cleanup, top-notch parental control, and online backup. AVG designers also continue to tune and improve their core security technology, the latest example of which is AVG Internet Security 2012 ($54.99, direct; $68.99 for three licenses). Not all of the suite's components come up to the high standard of the antivirus component, however.

The main window of last year's AVG suite bulged with 14 security component icons. This year's redesign managed to represent all the same features with 8 icons. Three additional icons allow integration with AVG Family Safety ($19.95 direct for three licenses, 4.5 stars), AVG PC Tuneup 2011 ($29.99/year direct, 4 stars), and AVG LiveKive online backup.

Under the Hood
Some of the 2012 improvements aren't visible. The new AVG Accelerator promises to significantly speed up downloads from YouTube and Download.com, with other sites to be added. YouTube videos did seem to load faster, though it's hard to measure for sure.

AVG Advice watches your system over time, checking for things you could do to speed it up. At present the main thing it does is warn you to close and restart your browser when it's using too much memory. I wasn't able to reproduce the problem that triggers this advice, but it seems like a good idea.

The LinkScanner feature, which detects malicious code on Web pages, now takes a wider view. In addition to analyzing Web page code it tracks what's running in the browser. This lets it handle modern dynamic threats whose code is spread over multiple Web pages.

Fake antivirus, also called scareware, was a top threat in AVG's second quarter threat report. The product now uses a patent-pending technique to detect scareware program strictly based on their actions and user prompts. This lets it detect brand-new scareware threats without requiring a file signature.

Powerful Malware Protection
AVG doesn't skimp on protection in their free antivirus product. It has exactly the same malware-fighting capabilities as the full suite. I'll summarize my findings here. For full details see my review of AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 (Free, 4 stars).

All of the antivirus testing labs whose results I follow include AVG in their tests. When the test's constraints permit, AVG submits the free product for testing. AVG antivirus technology gets good marks overall, though not always the very highest. The chart below summarizes a collection of recent tests. For a full explanation see the article How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.

In my own malware removal test AVG installed without incident and scanned faster than most products. Strangely, its rootkit scan is separate from the whole computer scan. On any test system with rootkit-based samples installed I ran the rootkit scan too.

AVG detected 88 percent of the threats, the second-highest detection rate of products tested with the current sample set. Its score of 6.5 points for malware removal is the highest among that group, and its 6.7 point score for rootkit removal ties for first place with ZoneAlarm Antivirus + Firewall 2012 ($59.95 direct for three licenses, 3 stars). Like Panda Cloud Anti-Virus 1.5 Free Edition (Free, 3.5 stars), Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Free 1.51 (Free, 4 stars), and several others AVG scored 9.5 points for scareware removal.

For a full explanation of how I come up with these scores see How We Test Malware Removal.

AVG also scored well in my malware blocking tests, though it didn't take as many top scores as in the malware removal tests. It detected 94 percent of the threats, the second-highest detection rate among products tested with this sample set. Its overall score of 8.4 points would have been higher, but a couple of the threats it detected managed to install and run anyway. AVG detected all of the rootkit and scareware samples scoring 8.3 for rootkit blocking and 9.1 for scareware blocking. For details on where these scores come from, see How We Test Malware Blocking.

The LinkScanner component in the suite includes a feature called Online Shield that's not available in the free antivirus. When I tried re-downloading my malware collection it blocked 42 percent of the existing samples, compared with 33 for the free antivirus. That's better, but not great. TrustPort Total Protection 2012 ($89.95 direct for three licenses, 2.5 stars) blocked 93 percent of the samples either at the Web page level or during the download.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/EUtyz7zZZDE/0,2817,2392086,00.asp

ky ky criss angel twins teacher teacher jamaica