AOL Active Virus Shield (commonly referred to as AVS) was a free

antivirus Antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware. Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the nam ...

utility made available by AOL. Its engine was based on the one used by

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Kaspersky Anti-Virus (russian: Антивирус Касперского (''Antivirus Kasperskogo''); formerly known as ''AntiViral Toolkit Pro''; often referred to as KAV) is a proprietary antivirus program developed by Kaspersky Lab. It is des ...

. The program is no longer available.

Features

Active Virus Shield includes numerous features found in Kaspersky Anti-Virus. The software's main feature is malware scanning, which uses Kaspersky's underlying engine and detects a variety of malware such as

viruses A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's ...

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their priva ...

, and even joke programs. It also offers

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

file and e-mail scanning and protection. The latest version of Active Virus Shield (version 6.0.2.621) supports

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

Advantages

Active Virus Shield is light compared to other commercial anti-virus products. It also does not consume much memory during startup. The program also benefits from Kaspersky's regular definition updates, typically around every two hours, which enable new viruses to be more effectively detected than programs that update less regularly. In addition, Active Virus Shield has better detection rates than other free programs such as AVG Free and avast! Home Edition.

Criticisms

Active Virus Shield does lack some features of Kaspersky 6.0 (such as proactive protection and

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

protection), and the license provided is only valid for one year, although the same email address as used initially can easily be used to renew it up to 10 times. It also does not support mail scanning when using TLS or SSL. Some users have also reported compatibility problems with certain applications such as McAfee Personal Firewall Plus,

ZoneAlarm ZoneAlarm is an internet security software company that provides consumer antivirus and firewall products. ZoneAlarm was developed by Zone Labs, whose CEOs were Kevin Nickel, Mouad Abid and Shahin and the Company was acquired in March 2004 by Ch ...

and

Logitech Logitech International S.A. ( ; often shortened to Logi) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software, with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Newark, California. The company has offices throughout Europe, ...

products.

Current status

Active Virus Shield is no longer available for download as of August 1, 2007. It was replaced b
McAfee Virus Scan Plus - Special edition from AOL
which is available for free for users with a free AOL account. Even though Active Virus Shield is no longer available officially, the latest version of the program can still be obtained from the mirror server that it is hosted on. Help is also still offered for those already using the application.

References

;Notes
AOL Active Virus Shield FAQ

External links