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PROS:
CONS:
F-Secure Anti-Virus deserved its place among the top five anti-malware products we reviewed thanks to its many advanced features, affordability and test results. It’s easy to use and it installs quickly, without too much hassle. Even though it might slow down your PC at times, F-Secure still performed well above average in all other areas of the AV-Test evaluation.
F-Secure is a Finnish software company with 26 years of experience in producing online security software. Every antivirus program on the market owes its basic rootkit removal capabilities to the developers at F-Secure since they created the first anti-rootkit technology more than 12 years ago. The Finnish software pioneer still maintains its good reputation by delivering reliable anti-malware software year after year. On the latest testing, F-Secure scored highly in areas of protection, usability and performance.
Features
F-Secure has one of the fastest installations we tested. It only takes a few minutes, it’s intuitive and requires very little of your attention to finish. It’s also among the few anti-malware software to have a removal tool for any other versions of anti-malware software on your PC. Although it might not seem that important, having only one protection software is crucial for avoiding cross-program interferences and jeopardizing your PCs safety.
Like many other anti-malware software, F-Secure Anti-Virus doesn’t have its own firewall solution but uses the Windows Defender to that purpose. Instead of a safe browser, the anti-malware package includes a protective browser extension that labels your search results based on the reputation of the websites. The extension relies on F-Secure’s SafeSearch engine when checking the credibility of a web address.
You can run scans periodically, or you can schedule them at your preference. For added internet security, there is a vulnerability scan that scans for weak passwords or outdated software that might be used as an entry point for malware. If you’d like to omit a webpage or a program from F-Secure’s scan, you can manually add it to the whitelist.
Price: $39.99
To get the most reliable test results for our review, we use testing data provided by the independent IT security institute, AV-Test. Every year the lab picks between 20-30 online security software and puts it under evaluation in three areas: protection, usability and performance. For the purpose of our review, we used the latest results from tests performed in November and December 2016.
The most important test result for an anti-malware software is the one for its protection efficiency. F-Secure was put up against almost 14,000 known malware (viruses, Trojans or worms) and the test was ran in two stages. The first stage tested the protection capabilities against zero-day malware attacks and F-Secure scored a perfect 100%. The second, exposed the anti-malware software to AV-Test’s malware base (of known malware for the four weeks before the test) of more than 13,000 known threats and F-Secure performed above industry average with 99% efficiency.
The usability test measures how well an anti-malware program can tell between healthy files and threats. F-Secure scored over the industry average by making two misidentifications of legitimate software for malware during a scan, and one by mistakenly blocking a healthy software from running its processes.
Some anti-malware software can slow down your computer significantly. To measure just how much lag an anti-malware software induces over a PC, AV-Test evaluates how much of your PCs resources are being used when running a deep scan of your computer. With the goal of providing more realistic results, the performance tests are run on high end and standard PCs. Even though it performed well for the most part of the evaluation, F-Secure registered a significant lag while the testers were installing frequently used apps. It used almost 20 % more resources than the industry average.
F-Secure offers phone support for more than 17 countries. Even though you can only reach an agent during business hours, the support staff is fluent in more than 10 languages, depending on the region. If you don’t like calling, you can ask for help through the online web chat option on the website. To find your own solutions, you can check out the knowledge base, or consult other users on the community page.
Email: You can access the live chat feature as well as gather more contact info through this link: www.f-secure.com/en_US/web/home_us/support
Facebook: www.facebook.com/F-Secure-107471754306
Support forum: community.f-secure.com
Phone number: A complete list of phone numbers for different regions can be found on this link: www.f-secure.com/en/web/business_global/support/contact-support
Website: www.f-secure.com
Our editorial staff evaluates products and services independently, but Best Review Guide may earn money when you click on links. Read our advertising disclosure.
By: Matt | Last updated June 2, 2017 
