Technology Lesson

New FREE antivirus IMMUNET reviewed

Immunet: Free Cloud and Community Based Antivirus


By Mary Landesman, About.com Guide

August 19, 2009

Oliver Friedrichs, who has a solid history of successful ventures in the security community, has just unveiled his latest creation - Immunet, a community-based in-the-cloud antivirus system. And not only does it run alongside existing antivirus, hes even giving it away for free.

According to its developers, "Immunet Protect provides protection by harnessing the collective wisdom of the security products that you already run, as well as knowledge on the applications installed across Immunets entire user population. Immunet Protect collects security judgments on what is, and what is not safe from its community. These aggregated judgments are coalesced in the cloud, and, if they are sound, made available to the rest of the Immunet Community immediately.

Immunet Protect allows you to integrate contacts from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and invite those contacts to join the Immunet community. This could prove helpful in a different way - helping you make smarter decisions about whose links you can trust.

Immunet Protect is designed to play nice with existing installed antivirus, which means you dont have to give up your favorite scanner to add this additional layer of security. Currently, Immunet has been tested and proven compatible with antivirus from Symantec, McAfee, and AVG.

Immunet is community-based, which means the more folks that participate, the better the product will become. The cons, of course, are that it does require having an always-on Internet connection and it could mean that files and/or system data are sent to Immunet. Currently there is no privacy policy on the Immunet website - a surprising oversight for such seasoned security veterans. If you are interested in taking Immunet Protect for a spin, you may wish to inquire upfront as to exactly what data is collected and how it is protected. To read more or download a free copy, visit the Immunet website.

http://antivirus.about.com/od/antivirusvendors/a/immunet.htm