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PCTools ThreatFire Malicious Behavioral Anti-Malware Review

ThreatFire

Recently, I tried Threatfire by Pc Tools who ia the same makers of Spyware Doctor. Threatfire is a malicious behavioral scanner which can work along side your regular anti-virus for detecting malicious behavior like key-logging, and sending of private info to the web.

ThreatFire is a “install it, and forget it” anti-malware tool since once it is installed, ThreatFire will start detecting malware behavior every time you are log in to Windows.

Threatfire claims to protect Windows from zero-day malware better then traditional security software which mostly relies on definition files for checking to see if the file is a virus.

A zero day malware is malware which is less then a day old. Threatfire also claims to protect Windows from known and unknown spyware, adware, key-loggers, viruses, worms, Trojans, rootkits, buffer overflows, and other malware.

ThreatFire is very easy to use since all you need to do is install it and let it run in the background.Plus, it starts up automatically every time you log into Windows, so you do not have to remember to scan and update definitions manually on your computer every week like other free anti-malware programs.

I also like how ThreatFire does a scan after you installed it on your computer to see if you have a firewall, antivirus, antispyware is installed, and scans your computer to free if it is free of malware and rootkits.

ThreatFire does not seem to slow down my computer to a noticeable level  when it starts up during windows start up, and I run it in the background running on my Windows 7 Home Premium computer with 1.8 GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM while I use my computer to browse the web, and do office work.  ThreatFire only uses about 4MBs of RAM according to Windows Task Manager.

ThreatFire also does not interfere with my other security software which I have running like Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes paid version, Winpatrol Plus, Windows Firewall, Bluecoat k9 web filtering parental control software and System Protect.

However, if you are gaming, or doing something which uses a lot of your computer resources, you can suspend ThreatFire by clicking the ON button under the Security Status  on the ThreatFire program window, so you can temporarily turn it OFF while you are gaming, video editing,etc.

I also like that it is not very intrusive like some firewall and anti-malware software which I tried in the past which show small pop up windows every time I install a program, run programs, or do other administrative tasks like disk cleanups.

It only shows a pop-up if it detects suspicious or malicious behavior running in Windows caused by an unknown or known malware program.

ThreatFire have not alerted me of any false positives thinking safe software like instant messengers are malware.

To learn more about Threatfire or download it, go to Threatfire.com .

If you use Avant Browser, make sure to download the latest version of Avant Browser which fixed a bug which caused Avant Browser to disconnect from the Internet when ThreatFire is running.

2 comments… add one
  • Computer Planet July 26, 2010, 7:00 am

    May check this one out, I generally use Malware Antibytes which has always been very good.

  • Johnson Yip July 26, 2010, 10:13 pm

    I agree, I use MalwareBytes as well which is a very good anti-malware for cleaning an very infected machine. Threatfire is more for prevention of Malware, Virus, and spyware then cleaning.

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