Pay if you want to get a really effective security solution, he adds

May 23, 2014 13:20 GMT  ·  By

If you’re one of the many users who are currently running freeware anti-malware protection on your computers, you might want to reconsider your options after reading this article.

The head of the European Cybercrime Centre, a European Union body that belongs to the Europol, said in an interview with Information Age that freeware anti-malware solutions do no good to your computer and those who’d like to remain completely secure and block any threat that might appear are strongly recommended to get a paid product.

“We see too often that people are using cheap and easy security solutions. There are no free lunches. If you are getting something for free then you are the product,” he said in the interview.

Freeware security products have been around for a while and there’s no doubt that they’re fairly appealing for users who do not want to pay for a similar application that promises to offer pretty much the same thing.

At this point, security apps such as avast! Free Antivirus, Avira, and AVG are ruling the top free security solutions charts, as they offer support for the majority of Windows versions on the market, while also providing features that can be easily compared to those of their paid siblings.

And still, tests performed by various security institutes across the world claim otherwise and place the freeware anti-malware solutions among the most effective products on the market right now.

A research conducted by AV-TEST for six months on Windows 7 and Windows 8 indicates that Avira is among the most effective products on the market, reaching the third place in the top after Kaspersky and Bitdefender products. At the same time, AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition and Avast! Free Antivirus have also received praises from the testers, as they managed to blog post of the malware during the research.

AVG, for example, received 4.2 points out of a maximum of 6 for protection, 4.8 out of six for system load, and 5.5 out of 6 for usability. Avira’s paid solution was ranked even better, getting an overall score of 16.3 points out of 18.

In a separate test performed on Windows 8.1, AV-TEST indeed found out that paid solutions performed better than free apps, but the differences weren’t actually so big.

“The free protection packages involved in the test have done a better job in the past than was the case this time round. In the overall ranking, the free software versions from Panda, AVG and Avast came in at 5th, 6th and 7th place with totals of 15.5, 15 and 14.5 points respectively but were a long way off from the maximum possible total of 18 points,” AV-TEST said.

“The most alarming thing about these solutions, however, was the detection performance of the free versions from AVG and Avast, which only achieved scores of 3 and 4 of a maximum possible total of 6 points in this category. The package from Panda was the only free solution to deliver a better performance.”

There are many reasons why someone in such a high-profile position would call freeware anti-malware solutions useless, but in the end, it’s still up to the user to decide which kind of security software is more appropriate for his computer.