Malware Has Yet Another Enemy

very good
key review info
application features
  • 589162 virus signatures
  • (3 more, see all...)

How much malware do you think your computer can endure? Despite the ignorance of some computer users that take into consideration only the cumbersome aspect of having an antivirus software installed on the machine, you should always keep one installed. You may think that its activity is not really worthy, but sometimes an antivirus can make a heck of a difference.

Antivirus companies strive to make their products 100% accurate in detecting and eliminating the malware on your computer. Heuristic capabilities have been implemented for zero-day attacks that have not yet been included in the virus definitions and real-time protection is also a must when it comes to preventing your computer from becoming infected.

F-PROT has quite a tradition in what concerns computer protection against viruses of all sort. It proved to be a reliable and efficient alternative to major products on the market. The present version of the antivirus is Vista ready and reached edition 6.0.7.0. Its price tag reads $29 which is highly inexpensive compared to the majority of the similar products on the market.

For evaluation purposes, the developer imposed a trial period of 30 days, which allows you full and unrestricted testing of the software. There is no nag screen available and no other limitations are present, so you can screen it unhindered.

The interface is nothing complicated and even a beginner should get along with it quite well. The first screen appearing after installing the application and restarting your computer (required after installation) displays the system status with virus signature date, last update, expiry date of the subscription for using the software. Additionally, you get to see which tools are activated and working for your protection (Complete system protection, Outlook e-mail protection and Internet Explorer protection).

F-PROT's first page will give you a first idea of the features it incorporates. There aren't many, so there is no chance to lose yourself in complicated settings and configuration panels.

Moving a bit to the left into Virus Scanners tab, a list of options and menus runs down on the left hand side of the window. There are three sections available, all of them contributing to your system's protection.

Virus Scanners area debuts with a general view over the activated tools. It will also give you the date of the last full computer scan. File System subdivision lets you enable the automatic file system protection, set the level of protection and the action to be taken by F-PROT when encountering a threat. Regarding the level of protection, the developer kept the options to a minimum of two.

You can choose to expand the protection to the entire system or limit it to the Microsoft Office suite only. To tell you the truth, I was expecting a bit more in this section and also something about the stamina of the protection.

The antivirus can have only two reactions when facing a culprit: either disinfect it automatically or ask the user about the action to be taken. There is no middle way like deleting the file or moving it to quarantine as the latter operation is approached by default when disinfection fails. This is for the default on demand scans; for setting other actions you should check the Advanced Scan section.

Internet/Email subdivision of Virus Scanners menu allows you only to enable the protection for Outlook e-mails and Internet Explorer and enable the heuristic for both of them. So there should be no worry when a suspicious attachment arrives as F-PROT would deal with the case.

Scanning your computer for viruses is one of the most important components of an antivirus software as the more flexibility you have, the better the chances are to keep yourself protected. From this point of view, F-PROT is great. It offers options for scanning the entire computer, only the hard drives, the removable media, the network or you can scan only a user defined location. There is also an option for scanning the entire network drives mapped on your computer. This way, you can map the drives and scan them automatically from your computer.

If you want more options for configuring the application's behavior, then you should check the Advanced Scan section in Advanced menu. This allows you to program multiple scans to be performed at a certain time. Additionally, scan level can be adjusted from Quick Scan to a Normal or Thorough one.

F-PROT can be configured to search sub-folders, compressed files and streams and its reaction at finding a virus can be disinfection or quarantine; if the first one is unsuccessful, move it directly to quarantine, disinfect and if there is no success either, continue the scan and only report the fact to the user. Advanced scan practically offers you greater flexibility in configuring the software's reaction at detecting a malware and the thoroughness of the scan.

Scheduling a task is an easy deal for F-PROT and the great thing about it is that it supports multiple scheduled tasks for different locations of your computer or LAN. These can be customized differently according to your own needs, in terms of reaction of the antivirus when encountering a nasty, how deep should the scan be or thoroughness.

The Advanced Settings section is equipped with options for creating the after-scan report, enable sound alert when the malware is detected and set F-PROT to report possible unwanted applications. This feature may prove to be a real pain if your computer is filled with keyloggers installers and other softwares you need, and the antivirus may report them as malicious code. Fortunately, there will be no attempt at eliminating them and the user is the one that decides their fate by uninstalling them or not. The software limits to only reporting them.

There may be some files or file types you do not want to be scanned in order to hurry the completion of the verification or because you are positive on their health. In this case, you can create an exclusions list for F-PROT to take into consideration during the checking.

The antivirus is cautious enough to create back-ups of the files it disinfects, of the infected or suspicious files. If by chance the file gets corrupted during the cleaning process, you can restore it from the Backup folder in Advanced menu. There are only two options available: one for restoring the entire file with the suspicious elements or and another one to remove it.

The Good

F-PROT proved more than once that it can be a stable and reliable antivirus. In Vista, it presents the same conscientiousness in scanning. Despite being in beta state on Vista, it performed quite well and successfully quarantined part of the malware detected on the computer.

The Bad

In the case of archives, when displaying the number of malicious files detected on your computer, the software will quarantine the archives and display a larger number of malicious content. This may lead the user into believing that it could not touch all the detected malware in the computer. The larger number of infected objects in this case is the sum of the archive itself and the content of the compressed file.

When restoring or removing the files, there is no "select all" option and if you have lots of quarantined items you will have to apply an action for each and every one of them.

The window is not resizable and this comes as a mischief when trying to get a good look at the detected items and their location.

The only way to close the application is to kill the process. The context menu of the tray icon does not leave you this choice. Restarting the application does not result in the application residing in the system tray again and it will close. The only way to benefit from the real-time protection again is to restart your computer.

The Truth

Unlike other antivirus softwares, F-PROT was the only one that did not hit me with false positives and correctly detected only malware on the computer. However, it failed to detect all the malicious content it faced. After removing all the items detected by F-PROT, I decided to do another scan with another antivirus. The truth is that there still were malicious elements left in the test folder.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 4
features 4
ease of use 5
pricing / value 4


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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