Anti-Virus Software

There are a number of companies that produce anti-virus software. This is not intended to be a complete list of anti-virus companies; but, it is a good starting place.

Anti-Virus Software Companies

(Alphabetical order… position in the list does not indicate any recommendation of one over another or, for that matter, any recommendation at all.)

ALWIL Software avast! (Free for personal home use)
AntiVir Personal Edition Classic (Free)
avast!
AVG Professional
Avira
BitDefender
ClamAntivirus
Dr. Web CureIt!
ESET Smart Security
eTrust EZ Armor Suite
F-Secure Anti-Virus
iAntiVirus [Macintosh]
Kaspersky Anti-Virus
McAfee VirusScan
Microsoft Security Essentials (Free)
MIMESweeper (mail firewall)
Norman Virus Control
Norton AntiVirus
Panda Antivirus
Prevx
Rootkit Hunter
Sophos Sweep
Trend PC-cillin
VIPRE
ZoneAlarm

Internet Scanning

If you search on “internet virus scanning” a number of sites pop up. Many seem to link back to the Trend HouseCall service so you might as well go there first (but there are others). Some here are free; others require a fee…

Trend HouseCall
WindowSecurity.com Trojan Scan
Virustotal (a service that uses multiple scanners on an uploaded file)
Sophos Threat Detection Test
Hitman Pro

Free Internet Scanning of Individual Files

If you are just suspicious of a single file then submit that file to one of these sites and see what the various anti-virus scanners say about it. This is also a good idea if you develop software. False alarms by scanners are not unknown and sometimes happen. It would be good to know if some scanner triggers on your file(s) before distributing them and then having to fight off the “Your software has a virus” support mails.

Disaster Recovery

And, should you catch a virus and it activates with a really nasty payload that effectively erases your hard disk (or, for that matter, you disk fails for any reason) there are companies that will attempt to recover your data if it is important and you have not followed our recommendation to back up frequently. These procedures are labor intensive so you should expect to pay accordingly. Some of these sites are listed here in no particular order and each has different capabilities.

User Notification Service

On 8 October 2009 Comcast started to introduce a service that monitors internet use by their customers. The monitor identifies patterns of use typical of an infected botnet machine (e.g., large amounts of outgoing E-mail traffic at night and similar patterns) and, if found, Comcast intends to notify their customers of this use so they can investigate what might be happening on their system. Tools to help with investigation will be provided. More Info.