What Is A Free AVG AntiVirus? (Explained)

Antivirus software is required for everyone. Microsoft concurs; nonetheless, it insists on turning on its own Windows Defender if Windows does not recognize any third-party antivirus.

Free AVG AntiVirus, however, you can improve protection above what is built-in without spending any additional money. There are millions of users of AVG AntiVirus Free worldwide. It received top marks in both our tests and the tests conducted by independent labs.

AVG Antivirus Free – How To Download And Install

AVAST VS. AVG

Avast acquired AVG in 2016. The findings of our testing and those conducted by independent labs show that although both product lines continue to exist independently, the antivirus protection engine at their core is the same. 

Why does the business keep both of them? Both AVG and Avast Free Antivirus have sizable fan bases, but each is particularly popular in particular regions of the world. The combined business is global in scope webcam protection.

Free AVG AntiVirus

AVG receives a lot of mindshare thanks to its global presence, but mindshare does not cover expenses. Only when users purchase the premium avast antivirus security package does AVG generate revenue. 

There is some slight pressure to upgrade or at the very least begin a 30-day free trial with all the premium features when you install the free antivirus. Avira Free Security is one of the products that put more pressure on you to upgrade.

However, the AVG antivirus no longer has a Pro edition. The free antivirus proposes you upgrade to the entire AVG Internet Security suite if you click one of the pro-only features.

The user interface of the product has a slate-gray background with green and white typography. It makes a clear distinction between free and premium features. Additionally, it identifies the Computer Web & Email protection panels as being of a basic nature. 

Panels for payment protection, privacy protection, and hacker attack protection are all included in full protection. The lock icon is displayed on all three, and clicking it encourages you to upgrade to AVG’s security package.

Lab Scores: High and Plentiful

You might not be aware of this, but the majority of the time antivirus businesses pay for the right to have their products examined by unbiased laboratories. The business does gain something; a good score offers it bragging rights, and a bad result allows the business to use the lab to figure out what went wrong. 

A business can be enticed to forgo the cost of testing with a free antivirus as an ultimate that doesn’t generate any revenue. To its credit, AVG is not. 

We keep track of four independent testing facilities that frequently publish results reports. In their most recent reports, three of them mention AVG protection, and the other four mention their cousin Avast.

We will examine four security tests on android devices that the AV-Comparatives (Opens in a new window) analysts conducted. Standard ratings are given to products that meet the minimal requirements, while Advanced or Advanced+ ratings are given to those that demonstrate advanced features and capabilities.

In all three tests, AVG and Avast both achieved Advanced+ rankings. In each of the three tests, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, ESET, G Data, and Kaspersky also used Advanced+.

Protection, performance, and usability are the three categories in which AV-Test Institute (Opens in a new window) assesses antiviral capabilities. The highest potential score is 18 points, with six points available in each category. 

AVG received six points for usability (i.e., it did not falsely label legitimate software or websites as harmful) and another six points for malware protection. With 5.5 points, it performed admirably. Avast matched those results to the T.

AVG technology and Avast both received a total of 17.5 points, which is sufficient for AV-Test to designate them as Top Products. Additionally earning 17.5 points was Kaspersky Security Cloud Free. But take note that ten goods managed to receive a perfect 18-point score in the most recent test.

The specialists at SE Labs (Opens in a new window) record drive-by downloads and other web-based attacks, utilizing a replay system to hit each evaluated product with the exact same attack in an effort to simulate real-world situations as closely as possible. 

The top products are AAA-certified, while the lesser ones could be AA, A, B, or C-certified. AVG gained AAA accreditation, much like Avast.

The most recent test from SE Labs resulted in AAA certification for a good number of different goods. Avira, Norton, and Windows Defender Security Center are a few of them.

Compared to other labs, MRG-Effitas(Opens in a new window) reports test findings in a unique way. Products that don’t provide flawless or nearly flawless protection simply fall short. Two tests from this lab are followed. 

For one, Avast is mentioned in the most recent report, while neither AVG nor Avast is mentioned in the other. Unfortunately, despite prior achievements, Avast failed this most recent test.

A third of the products I now track don’t show up in any lab test results, and another quarter has just one. AVG almost ranks among the elite according to three lab tests. Its overall lab grade of 9.9 out of 10 is sure to wow. 

Avast offers even higher avg free antivirus coverage with four tests, but because it failed the extra test, its overall score is lower than 9.6 points. With results from all four labs and a score of 9.9 points, Kaspersky is the clear victor.

EXCELLENT MALWARE PROTECTION

Before it can infect your PC, any sort of internet-based malware must get past a number of barriers. AVG might, for instance, restrict all access to the URL that hosts the malware or it could remove the malware avg antivirus free edition payload before the download is complete. I’ll talk about those layers of malware prevention later.

AVG considers that if a file is already on your computer, it must have slipped past earlier security measures. Its real-time security doesn’t scan these types of files upon simple access, like Avast, Emsisoft Anti-Malware, McAfee, and a few other programs. Instead, it runs a last scan on those files before they are executed.

I opened a folder holding my current collection of malware samples and attempted to run each one in order to test AVG’s malware-blocking capabilities. 

Over 90% of them were promptly stopped by AVG upon launch, and because Windows was unable to locate the files as a result, an error message was displayed. It stopped the majority of those that did launch before they could finish installing. I ran a parallel Avast test and received exactly the same findings.

Both programs outperformed Norton AntiVirus Plus by a tenth of a point, detecting 96% of the samples and scoring 9.6 out of a possible 10. Sophos and G Data scored 9.7 and 9.8 points, respectively, when tested against the identical malware collection. Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus, which received a perfect score of 10, is in first place in avg tuneup.

AVG prohibits the launch of files it finds to be absolutely unknown and sends them for analysis to the AVG corporate office. AVG notifies the user that it has discovered a suspicious file and promises to evaluate it shortly. 

This alert was generated by each of my hand-coded testing tools, but they were all found to be functioning properly. On the other hand, a ransomware sample that was flagged as suspicious ended up in quarantine. The same protection for unknown and suspicious files is provided by Avast.

For months, we employ the same samples for the malware-blocking test. We start with a feed of malware-hosting URLs provided by MRG-Effitas to evaluate each product’s capacity to combat the most recent infection in the free version app lock. 

Each URL is attempted to be launched, and we keep track of whether the antivirus completely missed the mark, quarantined the malware download, or prevented access to the URL.

We test using recent URLs and keep going till we have a sizable sample size. The findings are then added up. AVG provided 94% protection by blocking access to 65% of the URLs and removing another 29% during the download process. Avast produced identical findings. 

Although that is quite impressive, some rivals have achieved even greater success. With 100% protection, McAfee AntiVirus Plus is the industry leader. In this test, Bitdefender, Sophos, and G Data all achieved a score of 99%.

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BONUS ELEMENTS

Your online buying is monitored by the AVG SafePrice browser extension (for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera). If it discovers a more affordable option than what you’ve chosen, it displays what it discovered. It also provides coupons for a few websites. It functions exactly like Avast SafePrice.

Your internet security threat and privacy are improved with the AVG Online Security browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera. Using the menu on AVG, you can install it if it doesn’t appear automatically. 

The addon adds to the current security best antivirus against phishing and potentially harmful websites, especially those with a bad reputation. You can click the emblem for any website to learn more about it, including any ad trackers or other trackers that may be there. 

Additionally, you can choose to block all trackers on google chrome across all websites. It also adds colored icons to search results, with green denoting safe, yellow denoting dubious, red denoting harmful, and gray denoting not checked yet.

It’s a little challenging to find the last extra feature. A new item called Shred using AVG antivirus review is hidden in the right-click menu for files and folders. When you select this option, AVG overwrites the file’s data before destroying it, thwarting all efforts to recover the data from the destroyed file. 

Data is only overwritten once before being deleted by the shredder by default, but you may go into Settings > Tools > Data Shredder and select the three-pass DOD shred algorithm or the overkill Gutmann method (Opens in a new window). Similar functionality is provided by Avast, but only as part of its premium suite.

A FANTASTIC FREE ANTIVIRUS

AVG AntiVirus Free and Avast Free Antivirus share the same basic antivirus engine, as shown by their similar test results in independent labs and in our own in-house evaluations. 

Avast windows xp offers you a complete network security analyzer and a software updater to make sure you don’t miss security patches, but many additional functions are also the same. AVG’s cousin, Avast, is still the Editors’ Choice winner for free antivirus software.

Our second Editor’s Choice for a free antivirus program is Kaspersky Security Cloud Free. While Kaspersky regularly receives flawless or nearly perfect scores from the four independent laboratories that I follow, AVG and Avast currently have high ratings. 

It includes some (but not all) of the tools from the entire Kaspersky Security Cloud package, a bandwidth-limited VPN, a reliable behavior-based ransomware protection system, a straightforward password manager, a mobile device, and other features.

CONCLUSION

With helpful added features, AVG AntiVirus Free provides the same superior antivirus protection engine as Avast Free Antivirus.

References:

https://download.cnet.com/AVG-AntiVirus-Free/3000-2239_4-10320142.html

https://avg-antivirus-free.en.softonic.com/

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