How Do I Perform A Custom Scan With Avira Antivirus For Mac

• How Do I Perform A Custom Scan With Avira Antivirus For Mac Download
• How Do I Perform A Custom Scan With Avira Antivirus For Mac Pro

Open the Finder, right-click on file(s) and folder(s) you want to scan, select Scan with Avira. The result is displayed after the scan has finished. Using the Avira user interface Open the Avira Aplication. Click New Scan. Click Change scan type. Click Custom scan. Select file(s) and click Open. To perform a manual scan on your Mac computer: In your dock, select the McAfee icon. If McAfee isn't in your dock, open your Applications folder and select McAfee. Select the type of scan you want to run: Full Scan: Performs a thorough scan of your Mac. Scheduled Scan: Specify a schedule when your scan will run. Though you could do a full system scan, that could take an hour or more, depending on the files you have. Of course, if you get an antivirus alert that shows a false positive, just click on the box that says details and let the software know. Avira Antivirus Security for Android. Avira Antivirus allows you to connect your devices to the primary account for anti-theft. However, even if you have multiple device support, the premium version is an additional $11.99 a year.

. Pros Certified by one independent testing lab. Speedy full scan.

Excellent phishing protection for Chrome and Firefox. Network security scanner. Password manager. Website rating.

Active Do Not Track. Cons Poor phishing protection in Safari. Password manager includes only basic features. Bottom Line Avast Security (for Mac) delivers effective malware protection along with unusual bonus features.

Phishing protection only works well in Chrome and Firefox, but this free utility is still worth a look. For years, Mac users basked in the mystique of virus-free computing. It wasn't true, alas, and as time goes on we see more and more Mac-specific malware attacks. The situation may not be nearly as bad as for Window or Android, but prudence still dictates that you install on your Macs as well. Avast Security offers Macs protection against malware along with advanced features including a password manager and a network security scanner, all for a cost of exactly nothing. The product's spacious main window features a large status indicator centered in an otherwise-empty white region, with a menu down the left side.

It's a very different appearance from on Windows, which uses pops of purple and green on a dark gray background. Pricing and OS Support Like Bitdefender and Kaspersky, Avast supports macOS versions back to 10.9 Mavericks. If you have an antique Mac that for some reason can't even run Mavericks, consider, ProtectWorks, or ClamXAV (for Mac) all of which support versions from 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on. At the other end of the spectrum, Avira, Trend Micro, and Symantec require macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) or better. When reviewing a, I report how it scored with four independent antivirus testing labs. The very best products earn top scores from all four labs. But even if no test results exist, I can run my own hands-on tests using real-world malware and malware-hosting URLs.

It took years to develop my hands-on tools and tests for Windows. Most of them don't carry over to the macOS platform. Hence lab results become extremely important for my Mac antivirus reviews. Two of the labs I follow, and AV-Comparatives, test Mac antivirus, and Avast participates with one of them.

Experts at test Mac antivirus products using the latest macOS malware. They also evaluate each product's ability to detect Windows malware. While a Trojan written for Windows wouldn't run on a Mac, the Mac could serve as a carrier. Avast managed 99.9 percent protection against Mac malware. That's very good—better than most.

However, Bitdefender and Kaspersky exhibited 100 percent protection. In the Windows malware test, Avast detected 100 percent of the samples.

Most competing products also took 100 percent. However, Webroot only caught 75 percent, and got just 18 percent. Like most tested products, Avast received certification from AV-Comparatives for Mac antivirus protection. Having one certification is good; having two is better. Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and Sophos are among the products that received certifications from both labs for Mac. Scan Choices Avast offers several scans to improve your Mac's security.

A full scan on the that I use for testing took 14.5 minutes, just a hair over Intego's 14 minutes, and quicker than the 18 minutes required by Avira. The average for recent products is 24 minutes, so Avast proved quite speedy. Norton is the current speed champ, completing a full scan in 10 minutes. There's a separate scan for removable volumes, though you can configure the full scan to include them. I scanned a thumb drive containing my Windows malware collection and found that it quarantined 85 percent of them. For comparison, Avira detected 82 percent of these, while wiped out every single one. There's no predefined quick scan, which makes sense given the speed of the full scan.

The custom scan settings confused me, though. As with the full scan, you can add file locations to exclude from scanning, and configure it to scan Time Machine backups. But the full scan's settings include those options, and also let you include removable volumes and network volumes, while the custom scan's settings do not. You can schedule a daily, weekly, or monthly scan if desired. Settings for a scheduled scan include two additional choices.

You can set it to skip scanning if your device is running on batteries, and you can have it wake from sleep if necessary, to perform its scheduled scan. Not only offers scheduled scanning, it defaults to a weekly scan with no effort on your part. Sophos skips scheduled scanning, relying instead on real-time protection. Network Security Scan. More interestingly, it found serious problems with a network storage device (fortunately, one that I'm not currently using). Not only does this device have numerous open ports, it's vulnerable to a buffer overrun attack.

Avast advised updating the firmware; I just unplugged it. The report also serves as a list of everything that's connected to your network, identifying each by name and type. It's similar to the output of. With both products, I found devices with names like unknown65—not much help! Bitdefender includes an option to edit the name and type, and it remembers your edits in subsequent scans. I'd like to see that ability in Avast.

How Do I Perform A Custom Scan With Avira Antivirus For Mac Download

Excellent Phishing Protection in Chrome and Firefox. In the Windows realm, one thing that differentiates Avast's premium product is better protection against phishing sites, those fraudulent sites that imitate secure sites and try to steal your login credentials. The free Windows edition scored very poorly, while the premium edition did an extremely good job. Based on initial round of testing, the Mac product's phishing protection, both free and Pro, seemed to match that of the free Windows product, meaning it's not very good. I learned later that Avast's phishing protection is not fully functional in Safari. The developers are working on making it completely browser-independent. In the meantime, they advise using Chrome or Firefox.

Norton was also having problems during my original test, so I tossed those results and started fresh. My phishing protection test uses URLs reported as fraudulent, but not yet verified. Typically, these are only a few hours old.

That's important, because phishing sites are ephemeral. Once they've been identified and blacklisted, the fraudsters just create new ones. I simultaneously launch each URL in Safari on the Mac and in a browser protected by long-time antiphishing champ. I also launch each in Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, relying on the browser's built-in protection. If any of the five browsers throw an error message, I discard the URL. A true phishing fraud masquerades as a secure site and tries to capture your login credentials. Any URL that doesn't match that profile also gets junked.

The malefactors that perpetrate these phishing frauds are clever. They're always devising new techniques to get past security software. That being the case, I report results not as hard figures but as the difference between the product under test and the others. Tested using Safari's incomplete phishing protection, Avast's detection rate lagged Norton's by 32 percent, and Norton itself was having a bad day.

All three browsers soundly drubbed Avast. When I retested using Chrome, Avast tied with Norton and beat the detection rates of the three browsers.

That's impressive. Of the Mac security products I've tested, only Bitdefender did better, beating Norton by 5 percentage points.

While phishing is browser-agnostic, phishing protection is not. Bitdefender beat Norton by 5 percentage points, but its Windows cousin more than doubled that gap. Even didn't detect many frauds that its Windows edition caught. Site Rating and Do Not Track. Like, Avira, Trend Micro, and several others, Avast marks up results in popular search engines with green for safe, red for dangerous, and gray for unknown.

You can click to vote a page up or down. Clicking the Online Safety toolbar button displays the status for the current page.

It also lists all the elements on the site that can track your online activity, including analytics, social media, ad trackers, and more. By default, it doesn't do anything, but you're free to block any tracker or category. Websites are free to ignore the official Do Not Track header sent by your browser, but Avast's active Do Not Track feature has teeth. Offers a similar active Do Not Track feature. Digging into the settings for Online Safety reveals a hidden gem: SiteCorrect.

If you mistype a site name, this feature offers to change to the correct name. You can even set it to automatically make the fix, with no prompt. However, in testing, I couldn't tease it into action.

I tried pyapal.com, pcmga.com, whitehous.gov, wallmart.com, and many others, with no reaction from SiteCorrect. Basic Password Manager Like Avast's Windows antivirus, this product includes a password manager. Where the Windows product invites you to install on Android, the Mac one suggests adding password management to your iPhone.

On Windows, the password manager is integrated with the antivirus; under macOS, it's a separate app. There's no limit on the number of devices, and you can sync your passwords between them all, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Avast doesn't keep your passwords in the cloud. Rather, it uses your Avast account to authorize syncing data that's stored locally on your devices. Once you've enabled syncing on a device, that device becomes an authenticator for adding more devices.

How Do I Perform A Custom Scan With Avira Antivirus For Mac Pro

The new device displays a numeric code, and the existing device gets a notification with the same code. If the numbers match, just click to approve. What if you lose all your devices? On installation, Avast sends an email with a recovery link; don't lose that email! On each of your devices, you create a master password to protect the local password stash. The master passwords need not be the same, but who'd want the confusion of making them different?

Avast offers advice on creating a strong password, with a color-coded line representing the strength of what you've typed. It's not easy to get all the way to green, but Avast doesn't require it. In fact, it accepted 'Password' as a master password. Avast offers browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

When you log in to a site, the extension offers to save your credentials. If you come back to the site, it fills your saved credentials.

Clicking the key icon in one of the fields brings up a menu showing all the credentials you've saved. And it handles two-page logins like what Google uses. Avast doesn't use the typical menu of logins attached to its toolbar button. Rather, you click the button and launch the main application.

Unlike the Windows edition, this is a separate app, not integrated with the main antivirus. Its main window is seriously tall and skinny, like something you'd find on a smartphone, and you have only limited control over its size. Clicking an item opens its details, with a link to open the site itself. You can also use the password manager to sync and share secure notes between your devices. These are simple, unformatted text snippets, suitable for saving such things as locker combinations and non-digital passwords. The left-rail menu offers simple icons to manage passwords and secure notes, and one to bring up the password generator.

By default, it generates 18-character passwords using all character types. You can set the length anywhere from four to 30 characters using a slider. Avast analyzes the strength of your master password when you first create it, but not when you update it. On Windows can analyze your passwords, flagging any weak or duplicate ones. The free Windows edition used to include this feature, but it was recently enhanced and redefined as a Pro-only feature.

This password manager handles all the basic tasks and no more. Fancy features like secure sharing, two-factor authentication, and password inheritance aren't here. But you do get it along with the antivirus, at no charge, so if it does enough for you, go ahead and use it.

Worth a Look AV-Comparatives certified Avast Security as an effective Mac antivirus. Impressively, it offers a network scanner and password manager, features often reserved for full security suites. On the other hand, the password manager handles basic functions only—nothing advanced. And while Avast earned great stores in my hands-on antiphishing test, that function currently works well in Chrome and Firefox, but not Safari. But the pros outweigh the cons.

If you're looking for free Mac antivirus protection, give it a try, along with Sophos and Avira, and see which you like best.