Avira AntiVir Personal Edition is another high quality free antivirus, and formerly the Top Pick. The primary reason I removed it from its status involved the recent controversy of AntiVir including a re-branded Ask toolbar in their installer, and a temporary spate ofadvertisements promoting a possible 'scareware' company. In spite of the negative press though AntiVir is still a top notch antivirus scanner with outstanding detection rates of malware, higher than almost every other antivirus according to tests. AntiVir is still a good choice for a free antivirus scanner, particularly for high risk users.

However, there are some minor reservations. First, AntiVir does not include web or e-mail scanning capabilities; this is only available in the paid version. The lack of an e-mail scanner is not a disadvantage, it just means that AntiVir won't warn you of infected emails before you open them. But should you open an infected email, AntiVir will still spring into action, so it doesn't mean that you're not protected from email-based infections. Also, AntiVir contains a rather intrusive advertisement every time it updates. Although AntiVir had signature updating problems in the past, this issue seems to be fixed now.

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