Panda Protection: A Free Antivirus Program

Panda Protection once known as the Panda Free Antivirus is one of the most well-known anti-virus programs circulating in the web. It offers to protect you from malicious software and attacks for free. It boasts of being lightweight as all its work happens in the cloud and so it won’t take much of your system’s resources when it is running. They designed it to be an install-and-forget software, where you won’t have to worry about it after installation because it will automatically configure optimal settings and take care of critical updates for you.

This type of Antivirus software is called an on-access protection, which is a program that doesn’t need to be constantly turned on as it does its job automatically in the background as opposed to on-demand software where you have to do things manually.

The Panda is made for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, and 10 operating systems. After installation the Panda will automatically scan your system for you. The Panda security system has a real-time antivirus and antispyware engine to increase catching threats as soon as they come out of the box. It has the ability to scan email attachments as you open them and rejects websites that are known to contain or host malware. It also alerts you whenever you encounter phishing websites that collect personal information maliciously.

Aside from protection from the Internet hazards it has a dedicated feature specifically for USBs, which is one of the more common ways malware and viruses spread.

Room for Improvement

Among the cool features that Panda Protection offers, there are a couple of things that they could do better. The first thing you might find irritating is their aggressive advertisements to make you upgrade into their premium versions. On the home interface you will find a very noticeable ad for their premium versions as well as occasional pop-up ads when you are performing a scan. The second thing that you might dislike is that they don’t provide you a choice from opting out of data collection.

Overall the Panda Protection scores average when it comes to delivering the functions it promises. Not the best option, but is still good enough for the free services it offers.

If you are a Mac user check this out for free Antivirus.