We were irked but not entirely shocked when, even before the program had launched for the first time, the installer popped up a warning that the firewall and phishing protection modules weren’t enabled.
Have I Been Pwned offers the same free service, but it’s handy to have the function built into your security software – and it works continually in the background.Īs a rule, the catch with free software is the upsell. If any credentials connected to your email address are found to have been compromised then you’ll be warned immediately, giving you a chance to change your password before someone else does. When an untrusted program tries to write to a protected location, Avast immediately flings up a requester that lets you block or approve the app with a click, rather than requiring you to rummage around in the settings.įinally, the Hack Alert feature extends protection outside of your own network by monitoring releases of leaked or hacked data from third-party servers. The Ransomware Shield, meanwhile, does the same job as Windows’ built-in Controlled Folder Access feature, but in a more user-friendly way. Again, the software can’t fix such issues, but it can at least indicate where you need to shore up your defences. Then there’s the Wi-Fi scanner, which sniffs out all other devices on your wireless network to help you spot any intruders and warns you if it detects any insecure passwords or other vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an attacker. Again, though, that’s better than Windows’ built-in scanner fared, and a mile ahead of paid-for suites from Malwarebytes and Norton. There’s a good range of scanning and notification options too, meaning you can tweak Avast’s behaviour to suit your preferences.Īvast also missed out on a clean sheet when it came to false positives, erroneously sounding the alarm three times during the test. That’s still an excellent result, and better than you can expect from the free editions of Avira or Malwarebytes – or indeed Microsoft Defender. If our protection scores were extended to three decimal places, it would come away with an overall rating of 99.998%. It’s not quite impeccable: during AV-Comparatives’ malware tests, Avast dropped the ball just once. In our view, however, Avast’s is the best free offering, providing strong protection and a feature set that goes beyond its rivals.
The most obvious is what’s already built into Windows 10, but big names such as Bitdefender and Kaspersky also offer free versions. If you don’t want to pay for malware protection, there are several free options.
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