Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Active Virus Shield (AVS)

AOL Active Virus Shield (AVS) is a free antivirus utility made available by AOL. Its engine is based on the one used by Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6. Active Virus Shield features malware scanning, which detects a variety of malware such as virus, spyware, and even joke programs. It also offers real-time file and e-mail scanning and protection.

Active Virus Shield is light compared to other commercial anti-virus products. It also does not consume much memory during startup. The program also benefits from Kaspersky's regular definition updates, typically around every two hours, which enable new viruses to be more effectively detected than programs that update less regularly. In addition, Active Virus Shield has better detection rates than other free programs such as AVG Free and Avast Home.

Active Virus Shield does lack some features of Kaspersky 6.0 (such as proactive protection and HTTP protection), and the license provided is only valid for one year, although the same email address as used initially can easily be used to renew it up to 10 times. It also does not support mail scanning when using TLS or SSL.

Some users have also reported compatibility problems with certain other products such as McAfee Personal Firewall Plus and Zonealarm.


Note: Active Virus Shield (AVS) is no longer available for home user. AOL now offering McAfee Virus Scan Plus - Special Edition. For more info, click here.