Among the most famous free antivirus there is one that made a lot of talk about itself, positively, especially a few years ago: Lavasoft's Ad-Aware . What was once an anti-spyware program designed to delete advertising software (which often carried banners and pop-ups on the Windows desktop), has now become a real antivirus with all the functions one would expect from a security program .
Being included in the list of the best free antivirus of the year, it is worth making a review to understand if it is a good product or not.
Ad-Aware Antivirus falls into the category of Anti-Spyware programs as well as other programs such as SpyBot, Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware.
Although with some differences, they are all true antivirus, capable of protecting a computer against any infection (so much so that MalwareBytes is included in every malware removal guide)
If Spybot is great for isolating and removing spyware, Ad-Aware is particularly capable of isolating and removing adware installed on your computer.
An Adware, literally, is nothing more than a software subsidized by advertising only that in many cases these programs install unwanted additional sponsors and open invasive advertising pop-ups on the computers becoming annoying and also causing malfunctions.
Lavasoft Ad-Aware, after the recent update, can be considered an excellent second line of protection alongside the normal antivirus.
Ad-Aware is designed to improve your computer's security level with an extra level of protection.
This means that you can install Ad-Aware on Windows without uninstalling the antivirus that remains compatible with Lavasoft's protection software.
Ad-Aware automatically detects other antiviruses without conflict and performs daily, weekly or monthly scans to further protect PCs.
This leads me to say that the free installation and execution of Ad-Aware today would be a good idea for all users, both good and less experienced users.
Although it can be used as the only antivirus software, it is advisable to use Ad-aware as a second line of defense.
After downloading the free version of Lavasoft Ad-Aware, proceed with the installation in Italian, taking care not to include the Ad-aware toolbar and the Blekko bar (curious that this anti-adware program itself contains a sponsor program, let's pretend nothing and go on without getting angry).
The installation also updates the virus definitions and prompts you to restart your computer.
Lavasoft Ad-Aware requires registration of the product with a valid email address to which a code will be sent.
Registration is used to activate the free copy which, otherwise, stops working after 30 days.
If you use Ad-Aware as your only antivirus, then you can activate real-time protection from viruses.
However, as already mentioned, Ad-Aware can also be used together with another antivirus (in Windows 8 it can live with Windows Defender), the important thing is that real-time protection is disabled (only a protection system can live on a computer unless sensational exceptions like Immunet Protect).
Ad-Aware, if real-time protection is disabled, remains running on the computer to perform scans as programmed in the program settings .
The scans are very useful for detecting and removing spyware and adware every week that normal antivirus does not detect.
The free version of Ad-Aware also offers safe internet browsing, automatic and silent updates and game mode so as not to disturb the user with warnings and postponing the program scan if you play a video game (or if you use a full screen program).
If you want to activate the real-time protection feature, the software installs some additional drivers.
Ad-Aware, used as a unique antivirus, allows you to customize real-time protection to specify which items to monitor to keep it lighter.
By default, all items in the list are included in constant monitoring.
A really interesting option of Ad-Aware is, in the settings, the level of performance of the virus scans depending on whether it is fast, thorough, personalized or manual.
This means that if you are using a slower computer that cannot really handle a background scan process efficiently, you may be asked to keep it low in order to keep your pc usable for other things.
In this way, the other processes continue to work normally without the scan consuming too much CPU.
This interesting feature clears any doubts about the heaviness of the Adware program.
The scans can then be scheduled and customized by choosing which elements to include in the control.
In conclusion, I could not say that Ad-Aware is the best antivirus software out there, but I can safely say that it is a nice security program, much improved compared to the past, which can be used both as a single antivirus and as protection additional for scanning adware, less dangerous than viruses or malware but always annoying.
Each scan with Ad-Aware detects some problems showing that the program does a different check than normal antivirus which usually neglects minor threats such as adware.
Other programs similar to Adware Antivirus have been described in the article on the best anti spyware, malware, adware and pc protection programs
