The free version also comes with no entitlement to technical support, and – in the package’s only conspicuous piece of pushiness – the optional web toolbar includes a Yahoo! search box which can’t be hidden and a greyed out “Active Surf-Shield” button that tries to upsell you to the full commercial package.īut it’s easy to forgive a few limitations and foibles in a free download. However, keen not to cannibalise sales of its commercial product, AVG has warned that users should still surf cautiously, as the free package does not include the sandboxing feature that tests out unknown code in a secure environment. The company expects its inclusion in the free version to greatly expand the software’s malware database. This browser plug-in integrates with three major internet search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN), automatically scanning the pages that are returned as search results and highlighting potentially dangerous links before you click on them.Īs reported previously, AVG has told PC Pro that, in the 30 days following the release of AVG 8 Internet Security suite, the LinkScanner module picked up over 88,000 infected websites which had been returned as web search results. It also includes the new LinkScanner feature, which the company acquired last year when it bought out Exploit Prevention Labs. You don’t get any sort of firewall, nor the anti-spam module, though, as with the previous free edition, the package does integrate with your email client to stop mail-based attacks. Naturally, the free version doesn’t have all the commercial product’s features.

When we tested AVG 8 against a selection of contemporary malware, it identified 22 out of 28 threats, while the A-Listed Kaspersky Antivirus 7 spotted 24. You get the same antivirus and antispyware components as found in the full security suite, making AVG Free a competent, if not quite award-winning, virus detector.

As with its paid-for cousin, all the program’s modules can be accessed from one central console.

Avg for macbook pro os