Best Free Antivirus App For Android

Android's increasing popularity has led to increased security threats, ranging from common malware to advanced Phishing and ID theft techniques. Anti-malware engine: The app’s ability to detect, clean and delete malicious apps and scripts. As a parallel test for the real-time protection capabilities, the EICAR Antivirus Test was used. Extra Protection: Some security apps may include a set of built-in extra protection against malicious websites (Secure Web Browsing), against spam or massive commercial SMSes (Spam filter) and against Potentially Unwanted Apps or PUAs (Application Protection). If one or more of these extra protection options are provided, they are evaluated individually to see how good they do their job. USSD Exploit Protection: USSD codes are special "dialled" commands that can be used to access a variety of phone functions. Some malicious sites use this USSD exploit to take advantage of certain devices' vulnerabilities through malicious links and QR codes. If this protection is included, we evaluate the app's ability to block this kind of attacks effectively. Extra tools: Many apps include a set of extra tools to keep you protected. Some of them may include Call & SMS filtering, App Blocking and Contacts Back-up & Restore among others.

Their performance and usefulness help us to evaluate the app as a whole. System resources: No matter how the good a security app may perform, it cannot be considered a great app if it turns out to be a RAM hog or an adware flagship. After all, we do not want to kill apps just to keep our AV working or give away our expensive mobile data traffic to ads. Previously, battery consumption rates were part of this review. Read also: Questions About Android Security at the end of this page. Bitdefender Antivirus Free offers optimal protection against malware for your Android device. The scanning engine is good but cloud based, which means you will need an internet connection to make it work effectively. It will scan new apps as soon as they are installed and will consume less resources than other apps. Once installed, it will work on its own without any additional configuration, making it and an ideal antimalware app for the less experienced users.

Sadly, the lack of any advanced options might pose a problem for intermediate and advanced users who like to tweak settings and be in control all the time. AVG Anti-Virus Free has a decent malware detection engine that will detect and block most of the malware that tries to get into your phone or tablet (there are dedicated versions for both kind of devices). The not-so-good part is that it could flag some legit apps and functions (such as root) as Potentially Unwanted Apps, which is not good at all and can lead you to uninstall perfectly good apps. Its secure web surfing protection does a good job and provides a hassle-free browsing experience. Sadly, the best tools are just 14-day trial versions. It also lacks protection against USSD attacks and the Anti-Theft capabilities are limited to online options. Dr. Web Light v.7 is not a complete security suite (it lacks Anti-theft and Privacy features) but it does not promote itself as such.

It is not a mediocre anti-malware app either, in fact, its detection rates are very good and the RAM usage levels are below the average. The scan speeds are fast even with the "Files on Archives" option enabled. To avoid further confussion, you must know there are 2 different versions available: v.7 (free, but will show ads in the notification bar) and v.9 (just a limited 14-day trial). If all you need is a basic and effective protection against malware and you can live without the Anti-theft and other extras, then Dr. Web Antivirus Light v.7 is a good choice. TrendMicro Mobile Security & Antivirus has a sleek UI and a good anti-malware engine. It also includes a free privacy scanner for Facebook (it looks for unsecure settings on your account), 50 MB of cloud storage for data backup and that is where the free goodies end. TrustGo Antivirus & Mobile Security provides a good performance when it comes to malware detection.