

We throw in a few genuine emails, too, to see whether the software wastes your time by flagging emails and websites that are clearly safe for you to access. We click on links contained in phishing emails – hoax emails sent in the hope that the recipient will enter confidential information – to see whether the software stops you from proceeding to these dangerous scam websites designed to steal your data or infect your machine. Many security software packages claim to protect you from scam webpages and emails, but do they actually do what they say? Samples of unique malware used to test each antivirus package Will the antivirus help me avoid scams?
ANTIVIRUS ZAP SCAM FULL
No, we rerun our full protection assessment every three months to ensure the packages are still doing an effective job. We also punish packages that pester you with confusing messages and warnings or wrongly zap a file that you actually want to use (known as a ‘false positive’).Īnd we don’t test just once and say ‘job done’. We check antivirus programs to ensure they don’t let you pass on infected files to other people, even if the files haven’t been opened by you first.
ANTIVIRUS ZAP SCAM ANDROID
This includes Windows and Android malware, along with the rarer Apple Mac malware.

We have more than 60 honeypots around the world and these capture up to 400,000 files every day, and up to 146 million over a year. Our specialist lab operates what are called ‘honeypots’ – think of these like digital fishing nets designed to capture thousands of strains of murky malware and viruses. Antivirus programs are designed to block such malicious software, so to test them we need plenty of internet nasties. Unlike you, we’re constantly hoping to catch the world’s worst computer bugs. How well will I be protected from malware? One of our best antivirus software packages will keep your computer as safe as Fort Knox. We fire new batches of malware at the antivirus software every three months to ensure standards haven’t slipped. The world of cyberthreats never sleeps, so testing just once a year isn’t good enough. We test how effectively the packages work while your PC is offline, as well as online. Each package is hit with more than 10,000 samples of malware. When we say our test is tough, we mean it. When you download antivirus protection – whether it’s paid-for or free software – you want to feel confident that hordes of internet nasties will be safely locked out of your PC or Mac.
