Review and Reputation for total Av Ultimate Antivirus 2017

Security companies take a range of approaches to providing antivirus protection. Some stick strictly to the basics, rooting out entrenched malware and preventing whatsoever new infestations. Others pile on useful bonus features. TotalAV Antivirus Pro falls in the latter army camp. It adds back the real-time protection that's missing in the gratis edition, along with a useful collection of bonus tools. Unfortunately, even the presence of real-fourth dimension antivirus protection isn't enough to brand this product a top selection—although its score has taken a respectable jump since our last review cheers to improved results on independent lab tests.

TotalAV lists for $99 per year to protect three PCs. That'south high—Bitdefender, ESET, and Kaspersky give you three licenses for $59.99, Webroot asks $49.99, and F-Secure goes for $39.99. McAfee AntiVirus Plus charges $59.99 per year, merely that fee gets you unlimited licenses to protect all the Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices in your household.

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Like Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security, TotalAV doesn't offer different pricing tiers. Rather, if you lot want more than licenses you must buy a more than avant-garde production. TotalAV Net Security adds VPN protection and gives you five licenses for a listing price of $119 per year. TotalAV Total Security raises that to six licenses and adds an ad blocker and a countersign manager, at a cost of $149 per yr.

This production'due south dark-themed principal window looks almost exactly similar that of the respective free antivirus, with one big exception. In the free edition, the big condition indicator always displays a yellowish warning status, considering existent-fourth dimension protection isn't (and can't exist) enabled. Once you lot upgrade to Pro, your condition switches to the serene dark-green of full protection.

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A left-rail carte du jour contains vi icons. Pointing to three of them pulls out submenus for Malware Protection, Cyberspace Security, and Arrangement Tune Upwards. The other three invoke Countersign Vault, Family unit Account Sharing, and Settings.

Family Account Sharing is interesting. With any multi-license antivirus subscription, yous're free to use your licenses to protect family members. However, their installations remain part of your subscription, nether your control. TotalAV lets y'all souvenir unused licenses to others while giving them their ain accounts. Given this product'south high price, you won't want to waste any licenses.

Many antivirus companies pack full protection into their free production, relying on added features or a personal-utilise-only clause to drive sales of the paid version. In a very unusual move, TotalAV not only removes bonus features, it also strips essential real-fourth dimension protection from TotalAV Free Edition. As y'all can run into from the review, we're non impressed with that move.

At the time of our last review, TotalAV didn't appear in test reports from whatever of the iv antivirus labs that we follow. At present it shows up in 2, with good scores. Information technology didn't quite make the 18-signal maximum score in tests by AV-Examination Institute, but its score of 17.five was enough to earn it the designation Top Production. And in three tests by AV-Comparatives, information technology earned top-tier Advanced+ certification one time and Avant-garde twice.

Based on those 2 lab results, TotalAV's amass lab score is nine.2 of a possible 10 points. Kaspersky, tested by all four, earned the full ten points. It earned 18 points from AV-Test and took three Avant-garde+ ratings from AV-Comparatives. Avast Free Antivirus, AVG, Bitdefender, ESET, and G Data also got 3 Avant-garde+ ratings, forth with 17.5 points from AV-Exam. TotalAV'south score is decent, only non tip-elevation.

Equally mentioned, the paid TotalAV includes real-time protection not found in the free edition. However, protection against phishing sites comes from the same WebShield component. Phishing sites attempt to steal your login credentials by mimicking bank sites or other secure sites; when you log in to the fraudulent folio, you've given abroad your account to the evildoers. Since that protection is the same, costless or paid, we didn't take to run the lengthy and arduous antiphishing test once again.

At the time of our previous review, TotalAV detected 89% of the verified phishing sites, which is better than many competitors. In the latest test, that score dropped to an unimpressive 73%. F-Secure and McAfee managed 100% detection in their latest rounds of testing, while Bitdefender and Norton detected 99%.

A Boost from Real-Time Protection

We start the easily-on malware protection exam past opening a binder full of malware samples that we've curated and analyzed. For many products, the tiny file access that occurs when Windows Explorer gets each file'southward name and size is enough to trigger a existent-fourth dimension browse. Others look until just earlier the sample executes to actuate a real-time scan.

Lacking whatever existent-time protection, the free TotalAV antivirus did neither of those. Rather than score information technology a big fat zero, we gave it credit for removing 85% of the samples during its required install-time scan—quite a fleck better than in its terminal review.

The Pro edition did better, by a long shot. Equally soon as the folder opened, information technology started stacking up notifications. Rather than fill the screen with pop-ups, it simply displayed the number of threats in a single popular-up, with a link to view the listing by filename and threat proper name. It caught 78% of the samples on sight.

The next footstep in this test involves launching whatever samples that didn't get picked off in the initial massacre. TotalAV defenseless quite a few more than at this stage. One way or another information technology detected 93% and earned nine.3 points, the same equally Kaspersky Anti-Virus.

Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus owns the top score among products tested with this set of samples—a perfect 10. Stepping downwards the ladder, Thousand Data, Sophos, McAfee, and Norton scored nine.8, 9.7, 9.6, and 9.5 respectively.

The malware sample sets used in this examination are existent-world malicious programs that we collect and painstakingly analyze, a process that takes quite a while. Equally a consequence, nosotros employ the same samples for months. To get a feel for how each product handles the very newest malware, we use a feed of recently discovered malware-hosting URLs supplied past testing lab MRG-Effitas. The defending production gets equal credit for blocking access to the URL and for eliminating the malware download.

With no real-time protection to analyze those downloads, the free version of TotalAV had to rely entirely on WebShield's ability to deflect the browser from dangerous pages. It didn't exercise very well, blocking just twenty%—nearly the everyman score in this test.

We repeated the test using the newest reported malware-hosting URLs and giving TotalAV's existent-time protection a chance to help. With both malicious URL detection and real-time elimination of malware downloads, the paid edition blocked 88%. That'due south good, simply nevertheless barely in the top one-half of scores on this test.

McAfee and Vipre rule at blocking malware downloads, both scoring a perfect 100%. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, G Data, and Sophos aren't far behind, with 99% protection. TotalAV'south 88% doesn't come close, but it sure is better than the free edition's score of twenty%.

Rare Files

My testing makes use of several unique paw-coded utilities that handle tasks such as launching suspected phishing websites and recording how the product under test reacted. On the first use of each such utility, TotalAV popped up a window noting that it detected a "rare file" and needed to perform further analysis. Subsequently a brief wait, information technology gave each a clean bill of health.

To further practice this feature, I tried installing virtually 20 aboriginal PCMag utilities, tools that surely aren't currently in widespread utilize. Sure enough, TotalAV gave a quarter of them the rare file treatment before greenlighting them.

Paying special attention to uncommon files is smart. Norton does something like. The do good of possibly catching a null-day attack is well worth the few seconds wait earlier TotalAV releases legitimate uncommon files.

Smart Scan

Many years ago, security programs got a well-deserved reputation for hogging organization resource and putting a drag on organisation performance. Security companies got smart and switched to designing security products from the get-go to minimize functioning bear on. Some, including TotalAV, take a step beyond, adding components designed to actively heave performance. You can invoke most of these features at once by clicking Run Smart Scan on the main folio.

The browse goes through five stages, starting with a quick scan for malware. Following that, it checks your startup programs, examines browser condom, identifies system junk, and searches for duplicate files. The whole process simply takes a minute or two.

On completion, the scan displays a summary of its findings. The listing falls into eight categories: Malware Threats, Potentially Unwanted Applications (PUAs), Tracking Cookies, Junk Files, Autorun Programs, History Entries & Cookies, Security Recommendations, and Duplicate Files.

If TotalAV turned up whatsoever malware or PUAs, accept care of those immediately. So go through the rest at your leisure.

Tracking Cookies help advertisers and other trackers profile you, observing what you lot practise and where you become on the web. These are distinct from the beneficial cookies that shop things like your preferences for a website. Use the app to clear them.

TotalAV divides Junk Files into cached Windows updates, recycle bin contents, temp files, and Windows fault reports. You tin can click for a list of just what falls into each category, but it's strictly a list of filenames, no date, size, or other details. About users will simply click to make clean abroad the junk files. In the free edition, this characteristic expires 48 hours afterwards yous first use information technology; naturally, information technology's permanent in the Pro edition.

The startup program manager in Norton AntiVirus Plus gives you information well-nigh all the programs launching at startup, and lets y'all reversibly disable any of them, or fix them to launch afterwards a delay. G Information offers something similar. TotalAV simply lists the startup programs and lets y'all reversibly disable them. It's no different from what you can do using Task Manager. This is another 48-hour expiring feature in the free edition.

Browser history entries could allow a snoop acquire just what you've been doing online; the same is true, to a bottom degree, of browser cookies. TotalAV checks history and cookies in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. You lot tin view a detailed list for each, but in that location's no option to exempt individual items. Note that pressing Ctrl+Shift+Delete in whatever modernistic browser brings up a window that lets you accomplish the aforementioned matter. That could be important for free users when this feature cocky-destructs.

As for security recommendations, they're not what you might expect. TotalAV didn't that we brand any changes to settings. Rather, it suggested running a full system scan, installing protection on mobile devices, and submitting your email accounts for a Information Alienation Check. That last characteristic opens a folio on TotalAV's website, which reveals that alienation information comes from the free HaveIBeenPwned website.

If your computer is loaded down with large duplicate files, you're wasting space. TotalAV searches for duplicate document, pic, and video files, and displays a list showing each set of duplicates. In each ready, y'all select all but ane for deletion (if you accidentally select them all, the text turns red as a alert) then click to delete the dupes.

Wiping out duplicates isn't a unique feature for TotalAV. Tendency Micro Cyberspace Security and Avira Prime both offer something similar. Just note that these two are security suites; their related antivirus products don't scan for duplicates.

While some of its deportment replicate things you lot could perform in Windows, or in your browsers, Smart Scan pulls together a useful collection of arrangement tweaks. Be sure to run it every now and and then.

System Tune Up

You're also gratis to invoke the organisation tuning tools individually, without running a full Smart Scan. Clicking the Organisation Tune Upwards icon in the primary window reveals a menu with direct access to Junk Cleaner, Duplicate File Finder, Startup Manager, and Browser Cleanup.

There's a fifth particular called Application Uninstaller, that quite reasonably doesn't launch as office of Smart Scan. It scans the arrangement for installed apps and lets you check off any you want uninstalled. The list matches what you'd get by choosing Programs and Features from Control Panel, meaning that it doesn't include Windows Store apps.

The benefit this feature offers over Control Panel is that you can check off multiple apps and have it uninstall them all. In addition, it does its best to automate the process, minimizing user intervention. For testing, I checked off Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

For Chrome and Opera, I had to choose whether to delete browser data along with uninstalling the browser, and respond questions about the reason for uninstalling, simply TotalAV took care of everything else. In the example of Firefox, TotalAV only brought up the standard uninstaller app. I well-nigh missed it because it appeared behind the TotalAV window.

TotalAV puts these system tune-up tools at your fingertips, it'southward true. But in several cases, you could accomplish what these tools do by using features built into Windows or your browsers.

Internet Security

Clicking the Internet Security icon in the left-rail carte brings up a submenu with four items: VPN, WebShield, Advertizement-Block Pro, and Information Alienation Check. The lock icon next to VPN and Ad-Cake Pro reflects the fact that these features aren't nowadays in the basic antivirus. Upgrading to TotalAV Internet Security unlocks the VPN, while a farther upgrade to TotalAV Total Security unlocks the advertisement blocker as well as the password managing director, which gets its own master menu icon.

Yous tin can open the WebShield folio for admission to this characteristic's settings. However, its default configuration is just fine for security. Most users won't demand or want to change anything.

The Data Breach Check item in a Smart Scan report vanishes once you utilize it. Clicking the same-named item in this menu lets you bank check as many email addresses as y'all similar, even addresses that aren't yours. Hey, Bill Gates, it seems you've appeared in 79 breaches! Once over again, breach analysis comes courtesy of the HaveIBeenPwned website, which you lot tin can use directly at no charge.

A Definite Improvement

When nosotros last reviewed TotalAV, it had no test scores from the labs and fared poorly in our hands-on testing. TotalAV Antivirus Pro now boasts decent (but not tip-top) scores from 2 contained testing labs, proving that it tin can do the task. Likewise, information technology earned better scores in our easily-on malware protection and malicious URL detection tests. It has improved—its rating has gone from a two to a iii—but it'southward however non up with the best.

With dozens of antivirus products competing for your attending, information technology'south no wonder that nosotros've identified several as our top choices. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus and Kaspersky Anti-Virus routinely earn perfect or near-perfect scores from the independent testing labs, and both pack some useful bonus features. Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus aces our own malware protection test, and information technology has the smallest footprint of any antivirus we've seen. And a single subscription to McAfee AntiVirus Plus lets yous protect every device in your household. And all of these Editors' Choice products cost less than TotalAV.

TotalAV Antivirus Pro

Cons

The Lesser Line

TotalAV Antivirus Pro includes the real-time protection component missing from its free edition, merely fifty-fifty with that characteristic restored information technology won't challenge the top competitors.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/totalav-essential-antivirus

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