AppCheck

Note: Version update time for the Pro (licensed) edition is delayed maximum 24 hours to provide maximum stability.

Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts your personal files and demands payment to unlock them and restore your privacy. It has become a serious issue in the last few years, and security companies are continuously working on ways to not only detect and remove ransomware but also restore your hijacked data.

AppCheck Anti-Ransomware is an application that promises to protect your computer from ransomware agents. It doesn't act like a typical anti-malware engine, though. For example, it doesn't react when downloading a ransomware file. Instead, it reacts when the ransomware agents attempts to make changes to the computer.

Even if AppCheck Anti-Ransomware comes bundled with a real-time guard, there shouldn't be any conflicts when running it alongside an antivirus solution that has an enabled real-time engine. In fact, it's recommended to run the app in this manner, like a second layer of defense against ransomware when your go-to anti-malware program fails to identify it.

Running in the system tray, the tool starts the real-time guard as soon as it's launched, silently monitoring your system for ransomware activity. As previously mentioned, it only detects agents when they try to affect your computer (context-aware). You can also deploy an on-demand scanner from the main window.

In addition to the real-time guard, AppCheck Anti-Ransomware has a ransom guard designed to not only block ransomware but also recover damaged files, along with a ransom shelter that creates backups of the original files before they get encrypted by ransomware.

On detection, it displays a popup message on the lower-right corner of the screen, isolates the ransomware from the rest of the computer, and send it to the quarantine to await your inspection. You can find out the time of detection, ransomware type, file type and target path, as well as permanently remove the objects from your PC or restore them to a specific folder in case you want to further study them or send them to malware labs for investigation.

Advanced users can tinker with the program settings when it comes to protecting only local drives, auto cleaning up quarantined items, performing backups, and create a list of files to allow if you consider them to be safe.

The application quickly reacted in our tests when ransomware attempted to change system settings. It had minimal impact on the computer's performance and ran without any errors while keeping the real-time engine of Windows Defender turned on.

Taking everything into account, AppCheck Anti-Ransomware turns out to be a serious Windows application designed to block ransomware and back up target files before they are hijacked. More features are available in the pro version, namely auto backups, MBR protection and protection of files in shared folders.