Skip to main content

Top 10 Most Downloaded Security Apps [Movers & Shakers]

It’s time once again for our featured Movers and Shakers post. Each week, we take one software category and list the top ten most downloaded apps. This week, we are looking at security applications. These are the apps that can be carried on a USB thumb drive and can be used on pretty much any computer.

  1. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
    2. Weighing in at first place, raking in 2,583,548 downloads this week is AVG’s free anti-virus application. A great free anti virus program that we have seen many times on MakeUseOf.com including our Top 15 Must-Have Windows Applications. It has had 268,048,933 total downloads! It was also our readers choice in our poll here.
  2. Avast Free Antivirus
    3. This comes in second place with over 1 million downloads this week and over 79 million downloads since its release. Avast is a great AV solution and one I use personally. Avast came in second place to AVG in our poll.
  3. Avira AntiVir Personal – Free Antivirus
    4. Another anti-virus application that I have used personally on some slower machines.
  4. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
    5. This one is my go-to application for spyware and virus removal when nothing else can do the trick. I always keep MalwareBytes on my flash drive – don’t you? It was covered on MakeUseOf here.
  5. Ad-Aware Free Anti-Malware
    6. I used to use Ad-Aware back in the day for spyware removal before my antivirus application knew what that was. Apparently it has come a long way since 2004. With over 350 million downloads, the users can’t be wrong!
  6. IObit Security 360
    7. An application I have never personally used but it did make it into our 15 Must-Have PC Applications.
  7. Spybot – Search & Destroy
    8. Good old Spybot S&D. I couldn’t have made it out of 2005 without you! Not quite as popular as Ad-Aware but another Must-Have application.
  8. ZoneAlarm
    9. The best free firewall application on the market. Protect yourself from unauthorized access by applications or people. ZoneAlarm came in 3rd place in our What Firewall Do You Use poll.
  9. Hotspot Shield
    10. This is a tool to help maintain your anonymity on unknown or unsafe wireless networks. It encrypts your web traffic by using their service. It is ad-supported meaning you will see their ads on top of every web page and there is also a 5GB limit per month. I have not personally used this but with almost 3 million downloads since last year maybe they are on to something. In the past we recommended the app as a tool to watch Hulu movies from abroad but I think it no longer works for that.
  10. A Squared Free
    11. This is a utility for scanning for and removing malware from your computer. You can run four types of scans. They are Quick, Smart, Custom and Deep scans. The deep scan took over 6 hours to run on my machine and it is pretty reliable in detection. It seems it is pretty slow when updating the application and sometimes even requires a restart. It is able to quarantine items and then allow you to rescan them against a new definition file. With over 2 million downloads in about a month, it seems to be growing in popularity exponentially.
Check out this post on 7 Essential Security Downloads That You Must Have Installed and this post on The 10 Best Firefox Security and Privacy Add-ons.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MoviePass drops pricing to under $7 per month, if you opt for the annual plan

MoviePass, the subscription service that lets consumers pay a monthly fee to see unlimited movies in theaters across the U.S., is slashing its prices yet again. The company announced today it’s now offering its service for $6.95 per month, down from the current price of $9.95 per month, when customers commit to a one-year subscription plan. That works out to a flat fee of $89.95 annually. The deal is a limited-time promotion, as opposed to a permanent pricing change, but MoviePass didn’t say how long the offer is valid. However, it is open to both new and existing subscribers – the latter who would receive a 25 percent savings on their current subscription if switching over to the annual plan. This is not the first time that MoviePass has dropped its pricing. When the company introduced its $9.95 per month, one-movie-per-day plan this August, down from $15 for 2 movies per month (or more in select markets like L.A. and NYC, and going as high as $50), it saw so many new sign-up...
2 comments
Read more

ASUS VivoBook X202E Windows 8 Touchscreen Laptop Review And Giveaway

It wasn’t very long ago when prices of touchscreen Windows 8 laptops soared beyond $1000. Thankfully, those days are behind us, and portable computers can easily be purchased – touchscreen and all – for under $500. That’s precisely the demographic in which the ASUS VivoBook X202E falls. When compared to a high-end laptop, its specifications might seem modest, but for laptop buyers just looking for a way to browse the web, watch videos, use basic apps, and not spend too much money, something in this budget is perfectly suitable. The question is, of course, how does the ASUS VivoBook X202E compare to others on the market, and is it the one which you should be spending your hard-earned money on? Well, you’re just going to have to keep reading to find out. Best of all, we are giving away an ASUS VivoBook X202E to one lucky winner. Keep reading for your chance to take home this Windows 8 touchscreen laptop! Introducing the ASUS VivoBook X202E Laptop The ASUS VivoBook X202...
Read more

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...
1 comment
Read more