ClamWin Free Antivirus is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

antivirus tool for Windows. It provides a graphical user interface to the

Clam AntiVirus Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) is a free software, cross-platform Antivirus software, antimalware toolkit able to detect many types of malware, including computer virus, viruses. It was developed for Unix and has third party versions available for IBM AI ...

engine.

Features

* Scanning scheduler (only effective with user logged in). * Automatic virus database updates on a regular basis. * Standalone virus-scanner. * Context menu integration for Windows Explorer. * Add-in for Microsoft Outlook. * A portable version that can be used from a USB flash drive. There are Firefox extensions that allow the users to process downloaded files with ClamWin.

Real-time scanning

ClamWin Free Antivirus scans on demand; it does not automatically scan files as they are read and written. The non-affiliated projects

Clam Sentinel Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs. The word is often applied only to those that are edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the seafloor or riverbeds. Clams have two shel ...

and Winpooch are add-ons that provide a real-time scanning capability to ClamWin.

Updates

ClamWin Free Antivirus has a virus database which is updated automatically when it detects connection to the Internet. A small balloon tip appears on the taskbar icon indicating completion status of the update process. It retries to establish connection with the server if it fails to download the updates first time.

Effectiveness

Historically ClamWin Free Antivirus has suffered from poor detection rates and its scans have been slow and less effective than some other antivirus programs. For example, in 2009 ClamWin Free Antivirus failed to detect almost half of the trojan horses, password stealers, and other malware in AV-TEST's "zoo" of malware samples. In the ''1–21 June 2008'' test performed by Virus.gr, ClamWin Free Antivirus version 0.93 detected 54.68% of all threats and ranked 37th out of 49 products tested; the best scored over 99%. In the ''10 August-05 September 2009'' test performed by Virus.gr, ClamWin Free Antivirus version 0.95.2 detected 52.48% of all threats and ranked 43 out of 55 products tested; the best scored 98.89%. On 6 September 2011

cNet ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...

gave ClamWin Free Antivirus a rating of excellent, 4 of 5 stars.

References

External links