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So we always will have fresh protection against viruses. In this case, this antivirus program automatically updates virus, malware and other threats database, without our intervention. The release of new viruses and variants of old ones, make it necessary to have an antivirus with the latest virus information, and also can be upgraded easily. We can also run a scan: quick, full or custom. It will show when was the last virus scan, and when is scheduled the next scan. Once opened, it displays a screen where we can see a summary of the status of protection. To open the program, we can double-click on the icon in the task bar. This icon indicates the status of the computer protection, if it is green it means that PC is protected against threats. Once installed we will see a small icon on the right side of taskbar. Software's installation is quick and easy. Can be used free for home users and small business (up to 10 computers). If we have installed the operating system, and your PC doesn't have any anti-virus, this software will be perfect for us because it's free and offers a basic protection for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. You can also check detected items, and access simple options such specifying folders and file types to ignore.Microsoft Security Essentials is presented as an effective solution to viruses, trojans, adware, spyware, and other malware. It's laughably easy to get an at-a-glance view of your protection status and launch manual database updates (regular updates come down with Windows Update, making it effortless to manage Security Essentials in a business context). Its interface comprises just four tabs, labelled "Home", "Update", "History" and "Settings". In terms of ease of use, Security Essentials is hard to beat. The no-frills approach brings some collateral benefits too.
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That's a very creditable score, though Avira's free AntiVir package scored 100 per cent. That should be enough to keep you safe from the vast majority of online nasties, be they worms, viruses, Trojans or whatever.Īnd in our tests, Security Essentials did indeed detect almost all of the malware we pitted it against, picking up 96 per cent of our selection of live files. It adds nothing to the standard Windows firewall, and makes no attempt to warn the user away from phishing websites or hijacked pages.īut it will check the files on your hard disk and intercept known malware before it can wreak havoc. Security Essentials doesn't use fancy cloud analysis or sandboxing techniques like most commercial antivirus packages.
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In practice, that means a minimal feature set.
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