Download avast! Free Antivirus 6.0 Freeware Free Software

avast! Free Antivirus beats competitors' paid-for products in detection and speed, according to an AV-Comparatives report. Think of avast! Free Antivirus before your credit card gets charged again. The world’s most popular antivirus software: 155,922,047 registrations and growing.

Our avast! Free Antivirus often outperforms our competitors´ paid-for products and is the minimum protection anyone should have against viruses and spyware.

avast! Free Antivirus often outperforms our competitors´ paid-for products in independent tests, leading in both security features and scanning speed. In fact, AV-Comparatives.org rated avast! 5.0 the fastest out of 20 antivirus programs! Having antivirus protection is critical and, fortunately, easier than ever. Download now and in just a few minutes you’ll be enjoying the peace of mind that comes from having the best and fastest online protection available.

Features

Antivirus and anti-spyware engine Improved
Innovative scanning engine protects against viruses, spyware, and other malicious agents.

Real-time anti-rootkit protection
Prevents stealth malware (‘rootkits’) that, when loaded by the computer’s OS, are invisible to ordinary scanners.

avast! WebRep New
Provides website reliability and reputation ratings according to community-provided feedback.

avast! CommunityIQ
Our technology uses a global network of sensors to provide us with data taken (anonymously) from the actual web-browsing experiences of an opt-in group of avast! users. This info is then used to protect all avast! users with the most up-to-date information on viruses and infected websites.

Because of avast! CommunityIQ, avast! has discovered 68,152 infected websites and protected 34,524,280 people from visiting them in the last 30 days.

Boot-time scanner Improved
Scans your computer for infections before the OS can start to activate any viruses beneath it (now applies to Windows 7 and Windows Vista).

AutoSandbox New
Prompts users to run suspicious applications in the virtual Sandbox environment.

Intelligent Scanner
Reduces the number of required file scans up to 80% through a white list of safe applications. Files identified as safe are not rescanned unless they change.

Silent/Gaming Mode
Automatically detects full-screen applications and disables pop-ups and other notifications without compromising security.

Green computing
Leaves a minimal “footprint” due to its efficient and effective technology.

File System Shield
Real-time scanning of opened/executed files.

Mail Shield
Scans all incoming/outgoing email for malware (a special plug-in is used for MS Outlook).

Web Shield Improved
Scans all visited web pages, downloaded files, and java scripts. Thanks to the intelligent stream scanning feature, the Web Shield doesn't slow your web browsing.

P2P Shield/IM Shield
Checks files downloaded via P2P programs and while using IM or “chat” programs.

Network Shield
Protects against network-based viruses with two main components: a URL blocker for malicious URLs, and a lightweight intrusion-detection system.

Script Shield Improved
Detects malicious scripts hidden in web pages and prevents them from hijacking and potentially damaging your computer.

Behavior Shield Improved
Stops ‘zero-day’ threats and unknown malware before virus definitions have been obtained.

64-bit support New
Supports the 64-bit architecture platforms of Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Heuristics engine
Proactively finds malware undetectable with normal definitions and virus signatures.

Code emulator
Uses dynamic translation (a method much faster than traditional emulation) for both generic unpacking and within the heuristics engine.

Automatic processing
Infected files are processed automatically, without requiring user instructions.

Smart virus definition updates
Incremental updating minimizes the size of regular update files.

Fast application of updates
New format for the virus definition file means faster updates and reduces demand on CPU/memory, for uninterrupted computing.

Multi-threaded scanning optimization
Allows the splitting of large files between cores, which accelerates the scanning process on new multi-core CPUs and makes avast! run even faster.

Wake-up/Scheduled scanning
Schedule scanning at night or whenever you don’t need to use your PC.

Free for non-commercial home use.