App Review Avira Free Security 2021

It is advised to take all reviews with a grain of salt. In extreme cases some reviews use dramatization for entertainment purposes.
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Shadowra

cliffspab

Level 4
Verified
Well-known
Oct 4, 2019
175
To say that Avira is a garbage can is discriminatory...
What's wrong with you?
On computers where I have installed it (including my work PC), I have not had any problems....

Explain yourselves instead of holding hasty conclusions :)

It's unnecessarily heavy, and needlessly multi-process, on both my high and low-end systems.

And it's packed full of junkware, most of which is incomplete or non-functional and serves no useful purpose except to sell the customer 'modules' or 'upgrades'.

Compared to adult software like Kaspersky or Eset, I found it to be incredibly daft and felt silly using it.
 

Moonhorse

Level 37
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
May 29, 2018
2,602
It's unnecessarily heavy, and needlessly multi-process, on both my high and low-end systems.

And it's packed full of junkware, most of which is incomplete or non-functional and serves no useful purpose except to sell the customer 'modules' or 'upgrades'.

Compared to adult software like Kaspersky or Eset, I found it to be incredibly daft and felt silly using it.
Its like free version of avast free & the browser extension as web filter is such a joke

It feels like its only meaning is to make you buy full version by pushing all those unneeded system tools so i agree with you totally

But maybe it just dont need anything else than avira browser security on your browser + APC(?) the KSN of avira i mean it might just work for someone, for me it does not but i dont blame anyone of using it, about the paid version of avira i would like to use that as much as KIS probably
 

Shadowra

Level 33
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Malware Tester
Well-known
Sep 2, 2021
2,247
It's unnecessarily heavy, and needlessly multi-process, on both my high and low-end systems.

And it's packed full of junkware, most of which is incomplete or non-functional and serves no useful purpose except to sell the customer 'modules' or 'upgrades'.

Compared to adult software like Kaspersky or Eset, I found it to be incredibly daft and felt silly using it.

Additional programs are uninstallable :)
Especially since they are only installed directly on Prime.
On Pro, only the antivirus is installed (it can propose you additional tools, which you can refuse)

In terms of RAM usage, I don't notice anything on my side. Yet my work computer is slow :D (Intel i3, 8GB RAM).
Only the check that Avira does when it detects a threat can slow down, but that only lasts a few seconds....
 

Moonhorse

Level 37
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
May 29, 2018
2,602
On latest av comparatives microsoft defenders impact score were 21 and aviras about 7

Not many web filter work with vivaldi, so i could think using vivaldi + adguard desktop + avira browser extension + avira free
if i wanted to stick on single antivirus choice


The bloat is there but so many free antiviruses have it aswell , but that wont slow you down if u dont use them at all

Maybe i give avira new try
 

SeriousHoax

Level 47
Well-known
Mar 16, 2019
3,630
1) I tested Avira Free against a MBR destroyer. Avira already had an offline signature for it, but for some reason didn't detect the file itself before or after execution. But stopped two exe files that the malware spawned. Malware couldn't write to MBR but still managed to damage the system somehow as the system became unresponsive. Restaring the system didn't fix it either. This was a weird behavior.

2) Avira is not so good at malware removal. Looks like it can't delete malware associated scheduled task and registry entries. At least its real time protection can't. Either it doesn't have a correlation engine, or what it has is very weak and basic, like the other two products I'm about to mention below.

I tested some AV product's removal ability on an already infected system. I infected the system with a SmokeLoader malware. The malware created an entry in the roaming folder, created a scheduled task and a couple of registry entries associated with it, and was calling home to a malicious domain via explorer.exe.

Avira, ESET, F-Secure only detected the infected file in the roaming folder when I tried to access it but didn't remove the scheduled task and registry entries associated with it. ESET and F-Secure (and BD, Avast, K) were able to detect and block the malicious connection made via explorer.exe as both products have system-wide web protection which Avira doesn't (F-Secure can't detect HTTPS connection outside the browser, only HTTP). Since they couldn't delete the malware properly, the malware kept coming back.
Kaspersky, Microsoft Defender, Avast/AVG, Bitdefender, Norton were able to remove the malware related scheduled task. Microsoft Defender and Kaspersky also removed two additional registry entries connected to the malware. Maybe Avast, Bitdefender and Norton did too, but I forgot to check. Removing the scheduled task was enough to get rid of the malware persistency (I'm not a malware analyst BTW, so I could be wrong about this).
Avira is light and it's pretty good. Lighter than F-Secure in system impact and ram usage, since it doesn't have anything like DeepGuard. Malware prevention is the key so malware removal isn't prioritized nowadays in home products. But if you use such an AV, then keep a capable seconds opinion scanner like Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool (The best) just in case. Specially if someone else like kids use your PC.
 

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