avast! Free Antivirus for Mac
Introduction
Welcome to avast! Free Antivirus for Mac.
avast! Free Antivirus for Mac contains the same ICSA Certified scan engine as all avast! antivirus products.
With built-in anti-spyware, certified by West Coast Lab’s Checkmark process, avast! antivirus offers best-in-class protection against viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, and other malware threats.
About AVAST Software a.s.
Since 1988, AVAST Software has produced antivirus products that have been developed into the multi-award winning avast! antivirus product line, making avast! one of the most mature and tested products on the antivirus market.
Headquartered in Prague, in the Czech Republic, AVAST Software develops and markets avast! antivirus products that protect every major operating system and every major type of vulnerable device. Further details about the company and its products can be found on our website, www.avast.com.
avast!® is a registered trademark in the United States of America and other countries and is used under exclusive license to AVAST Software a.s.
Further Help
If you experience any difficulties with avast! Free Antivirus for Mac, which you are unable to resolve after reading this manual, you may find the answer in the Support Center of our website at http://support.avast.com
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In the Knowledgebase section you can quickly find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions
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Alternatively, you can take advantage of the avast! Support Forums. Here you can interact with other users of avast! who may have experienced the same problem and may already have discovered the solution. You will need to register to use the forum but this is a very quick and simple process. To register to use the forum, go to http://forum.avast.com/Key features of avast! antivirus
avast! is the multi-award winning antivirus product line from AVAST Software a.s., which is ICSA Labs certified, and Checkmark certified (for both antivirus and anti-malware). avast! antivirus is a multiple recipient of the Virus Bulletin 100% award, for detection of 100% of in-the-wild viruses, and is a repeated winner of the Secure Computing Award.
avast! antivirus is actively protecting over 150 million devices worldwide; it is specifically engineered to have low system requirements and to update both itself and the virus definitions automatically.
avast! antivirus represents a collection of high-end technologies created to give you unrivaled protection against all forms of malware. The key features of avast! Free Antivirus for Mac are described below.
Antivirus kernel
The antivirus kernel is the basic core of the program. The latest version of the avast! antivirus kernel combines outstanding detection abilities with high performance. You can expect 100% detection of “in-the-wild” viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses.
The kernel is certified byICSA Labs; it frequently takes part in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, regularly yielding the VB100 award.
Real-time Shields
Real-time protection is one of the most important features of an antivirus program today. avast! Free Antivirus for Mac includes “After-close” and “On-execute” check which will ensure that any newly created or modified files are automatically scanned at the moment they are closed or executed. avast! Free Antivirus for Mac also automatically scans all your web browsing and incoming mail. In this way, potential infections will be detected before they have any chance to infect your computer.
Automatic updates
perform the update when you are online. You can also initiate an update manually at any time from the main user interface.
System requirements
The following are the minimum system requirements in order to run avast! antivirus Mac Edition on your Mac system (please note that Mac OS X versions prior to 10.5 and PowerPC-based machines are not supported):
Intel-based machines:
Any Intel-based Mac with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or newer installed, with a minimum 512 MB of RAM (1 GB preferred) and 256 MB of free hard disk space.
How to use avast! Free Antivirus for Mac
When you start avast! Free Antivirus for Mac on your apple computer, the following graphical interface will appear.
On the left side are listed all the main features, while on the right you can see the various options and summary information.
Overview
Here you can see the status of your avast! Free Antivirus for Mac and all of its services. If it shows that your computer is “Secured”, it means that all services are running as they should. You can also see information about your program version and virus definitions version, so you can see whether they are completely up to date.
Your virus definitions are normally updated automatically, but if you click on the Update icon, next to the “wrench” icon in the top-right corner of the screen, avast will try to find the latest virus database and program updates. If new versions are found, they will be downloaded and your program and virus definitions will be updated.
The wrench icon can be used to access the system preferences, where you can adjust your settings according to your particular requirements – see the section “Preferences” later in this guide.
Scan Computer
Here you can decide what to scan: • Full System scan (1)
• Local Volumes Scan (2) • Network Volumes Scan (3) • Removable volumes scan (4) • *user* Home Scan (5)
• Custom Scan (6)
After selecting any of these actions, you may be prompted for to select the specific location and/or files that you want to be scanned.
While a scan is running you can see what is currently being scanned. Here you can also see a list of any infected or suspicious files, together with details of their location and other information about the potential infection.
By clicking the button marked “Detail level” you can choose to additionally see warnings about files which could not be scanned. This option can be turned off in the system preferences if it isn’t required – see the section “Preferences” later in this guide. If selected in the system preferences, you can also choose to view information about scanned clean files. However, it is recommended to enable this option only if you really need to see information about clean files, as this could produce a very long list of many thousands of files.
Scan Reports
Here you can find the results of scans which you have run in the past, including the time the scan was run and details of any infections that were detected.
Shields
The real-time shields are the most important part of the program, as they are working continuously to prevent your computer from becoming infected. avast! Free Antivirus for Mac includes three real-time shields which monitor all of your computer's activity -
checking all programs and files in real-time at the moment a newly created or modified file is closed (or in the case of binary/script files, at the moment the file is executed), scanning all your incoming mail, and protecting you from infected web pages while browsing the web.
For each shield, the “activity” tab shows you how many files have been scanned and whether any infected files were found. In the “history” tab you can see information about malicious programs that avast has detected.
File System Shield
Mail Shield
The Mail Shield checks all your incoming email messages and will warn you with a message in the email header if anything suspicious is detected. This shield scans all email received by your installed email program but cannot scan web based emails.
Web Shield
Additional Protection
To give you even more confidence while browsing the web, we provide our WebRep plugin for the three main browsers: Safari (with third party extensions enabled), Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome (Chromium).
The WebRep plugin is based on information received from the global avast! user
community related to the content and security of visited websites, to help improve the browsing experience of all users. You can contribute your own feedback by “voting” on the content and security of websites that you visit.
When you visit a website, you will see three bars (red, yellow, or green) to the left of the address bar, which tell you how the website has been rated, or when you do a search using one of the popular search engines, you will see the same color-coded indicator next to each of the listed results.
The color of the indicator tells you whether the site is rated as "good" (green), "average" (yellow), or "bad" (red). The number of bars that are highlighted indicate the strength of the rating. One, two, or three highlighted bars represent a small, limited, or large number of votes.
Clicking on the colored indicator will open a box where you can see more information about how the site has been rated and where you can also submit your own vote:
On the left side, you can see the overall rating. Below the rating, you can see smaller icons which represent the categories that the site belongs to.
Maintenance
Finally, in Maintenance/Registration tab, you can register your avast! Free Antivirus for Mac to ensure that you continue to receive all the latest virus definition updates.
On this screen you can see how many days you have left before your current registration expires and you will need to re-register. Registration takes just a moment and it is
completely free to re-secure your avast! Free Antivirus for Mac and receive a further year of free virus updates.
If you already have an avast! Account, just click on “Already have account?” and simply login using the email address and password you provided during your previous
registration.
Your avast! Free Antivirus for Mac will then be registered automatically and you will continue to receive free virus updates another 12 months, to protect you from the latest threats.
Preferences
You can access the configuration menu by clicking the wrench button in upper right corner. The configuration menu (Preferences) enables you to change the status of each avast! shield and more.
The first tab gives you full control over the real-time shields. You can enable or disable them, as well as specify more advanced settings, such as excluding particular directories and files from being scanned.
In the “On-demand scans” tab, you can decide whether the scans that you run should scan the whole files, or just look for specific virus markers that may indicate a possible
infection. Scanning whole files is more thorough, but will take longer.
You can also specify whether removable devices and/or mounted network drives should be scanned and you can customize the level of detail that can be viewed in your scan reports i.e. whether or not to include warnings about files which could not be scanned, and
information about files which have been scanned and were found to be clean.
In the final “Miscellaneous” tab you can check if you are connected to your avast! Account and whether you are participating in the avast! Community, and you can change these settings as required. You can also specify how often the status of your avast! Free Antivirus for Mac should be sent to your avast! Account.