14 DAY TRIAL // LinkScanner
The suite approaches the security of your computer from all angles, minimizing the threat risk as much as possible. With LinkScanner, AVG allows you to be informed of the trust-level of the websites you decide to navigate to after submitting a search query to the most popular search engines today (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Altavista and Baidu).
LinkScanner is a plugin that functions with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. It is designed to give you a heads-up before accessing search results, by simply displaying a safety mark to its side.
The mark changes depending on the security level of the page it describes. All you need to remember is that if it is not green, chances are threats are lurking about; and if it is red, then there is definitely malware waiting at the other end. Keep in mind that on Yahoo!, only suspicious pages and those containing active threats are marked. All safe links are left unlabeled.
Besides the search-shield, LinkScanner also sports an Active Surf-Shield, whose action is independent of the web browser used because it monitors HTTP traffic. So, you can benefit from its protection against exploits and more complex online threats. Its activity does not overlap Web Shields, the component in AVG Internet Security that prevents you from downloading viruses and spyware.
LinkScanner does not require too much setting up. The only configuration present in the module refers to enabling or disabling the search-shield, surf shield or the reporting of detected threats.
System Tools
For advanced users that require as much information as possible in order to accurately track the source of the computer trouble, AVG makes available a set of tools that can show data about running processes, network connections, IE extensions and Layered Service Providers.
These are simple instruments that can be of help when it comes to finding out malicious items on the system. “Processes” is similar to a process manager, only the options in AVG are much more restricted as you are only given the possibility to terminate a selected process. However, the information provided by this window includes the name of the process, path, title of its corresponding window and ID. But the most important piece of data present concerns security details of the selected process.
Under “Network Connections,” there are listed all the applications currently connecting to the Internet. Your options are terminating either the process or the connection. The amount of information present in this screen includes the protocol used for the data transmission, local and remote addresses involved, as well as the current state of the connection.
A startup manager has also been included in AVG’s toolbox. Although extremely feeble, it will permit removing items from the list, thus improving system’s startup time. As far as information is concerned, this startup manager offers only basic details, such as location in the registry and on the hard drive. BHO management and an LSP Viewer are the last tools in the tool chest.
Email Scanner
All email downloaded to your POP3 account can be verified by AVG’s engines for malware content, as well as the messages you send. The initial settings present in the Overview screen are just for activating the scan for both incoming and outgoing emails and enabling a notification window while the message is being checked.
But further configuration and customization of the way the feature works can be done from the Advanced Settings menu. Should it detect a message containing malware, the application will automatically label it with ***VIRUS*** in the subject. You can change the mark in the subject with whatever suits you, although the default choice seems downright visible to me.
For a more thorough scan, scanning process can be improved by enabling heuristics or check even inside archives. The application can report to you whenever a special attachment is encountered, such as password protected ones, files containing macros or with hidden extensions.
Identity Protection, Resident and Web Shields
Your system is continuously protected by these two components of AVG Internet Security. Their task, although similar, is carried out on different fields. Identity Protection deals exclusively with monitoring the behavior of the processes running on the system.
It keeps all the processes under observation and should malicious code be detected, the component’s action will be in complete accordance with your settings: prompt or it can automatically quarantine detected/known threats. The set of choices also includes the possibility to witness the malware removal process or send the piece of malicious code to AVG Virus Lab.
Resident Shield’s general purpose is not far from what Identity Protection has to do, but the difference is that the former will check each file that is opened, saved or copied, looking after system areas as well. The entire verification is done in the background and the impact on the system is really unnoticeable for the average user.
In the case of the Resident Shield, the advanced settings permit you to restrict the number of files going through examination, in order to allow it to intervene as little as possible. Thus, the module can be configured to scan only files prone to infections and a user-defined amount of extensions. For increased performance, power-users are given the possibility to create lists with excluded folders and files.
With Identity protection watching over running processes and Resident Shield taking care that each file you work with is clean, Web Shield’s activity field is represented by the files you download from the Internet. Downloading from the web is the best way to gather infections nowadays. However, even if AVG’s web shield will not keep you safe from all infections likely to be downloaded on your system surreptitiously, it sure slashes off a hefty amount of them.
Moreover, exchanging data over IM programs is common practice and AVG developers have thought about keeping you safe from threats sent through this sort of communication channel, too. That is why Web Shield component will also check the data commuted through IM. Supported software is ICQ, MSN and Yahoo!, so they got this covered pretty good as these instant messaging services have the largest market share.
The components gathered under AVG Internet Security 9 are not the best functioning, nor do they offer top notch protection. But this is not saying that its protection can be discarded for a different suite because the proactive protection offered is not at all negligible. All components work together to making sure that every bit on your system can be used safely.
Real-time protection is enforced on all fronts, covering resident data, and incoming files and surreptitious communication. The risk of getting infected by landing on insecure pages minimizes dramatically when AVG is combined with Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, as well as the most used browsers (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu), as the suite warns about the threat level posed by the returned searches. It will also prevent you from falling into phishing traps that are more frequent and cunningly created these days. However, joining forces with IE or Firefox’s anti-phishing is always a good choice.
Working with AVG may seem simple at first if you look at the components in Overview window. However, the advanced settings under Tools menu will soon change that opinion. Sometimes configuration seems to address only users with a certain level of experience and not at all the home user for whom the entire suite has been created. From this point of view, AVG Internet Security suite fails to provide the ease of use required by the targeted user. On the bright side, everything is pretty much configured out of the box, so there is little tweaking to be made.
The Good
The installation procedure has been much improved, with a reduced number of steps to go through adding protection to your system. You get to configure the update frequency for the modules relying on malware signatures right from the beginning, so once the schedule is set, you won’t have a problem with this anymore.
All components making up the suite are visible in the main screen of the application, as well as their status and overall protection state. Due to the easy settings available under components’ status overview window and the pre-configured modules, you won’t have too much work to do, unless you want full customization of each component in the suite.
The Bad
Spam training did not work as expected during our testing. Also, fine tuning some modules may not prove to be too user-friendly in some cases, especially when the suite is not shipped with a manual containing thorough explanations for some options and settings.
In the case of Anti-Spam component, its Advanced Settings are not at all suitable for a home user, but a server administrator. Also, the help file does not shed any light for the options of this section, but rather warns that “inappropriate changes may result in bad performance and incorrect component functionality.”
During some scans, we caught the engine putting quite a stress on the CPU, spiking over 80%. Recording this on a Core 2 Duo running at 2GHz is not exactly flattering these days.
Installing AVG toolbar comes with Yahoo! as search engine option, kind of imposing it as there is no option to disable the search bar. It gives you the possibility to enable/disable Search-Shield and Active Surf-Shield, but removing it won’t affect these components at all because you will still be able to control them from AVG Internet Security’s main interface.
The lack of a parental control component also needs to be noted.
The Truth AVG Internet Security 9 will not offer first-class protection against malware, nor does it inconvenience you in any way. It is neither overprotective so as to trouble you with false positives, nor intrusive to ask for your permission each time a new application launches (although you can set it this way).
Abusing computer resources is not at all a regular activity of AVG; on the contrary, it is rather an exception occurring temporarily and which will surely be addressed.
AVG Internet Security showed proficiency in keeping malware off the system, all components pulling together in the same direction and complementing each other. But mixing the suite with the forms of protection that come with one of the supported web browsers and search engines can only lead to a stronger protection layer and lessen the risk of getting the system infected.
