Malware (malware) removal software are the most important tools that can be used to protect your computer from being compromised by malicious software. If you are wondering how anti-malware tools are different from anti-virus software, you should first know the difference between them.
Viruses can be defined as pieces of code that have the ability to copy themselves in order to harm your computer and that can endanger both your system and your data. When you think of malware, you should think of spyware, trojans, adware, ransomware. All viruses can be defined as malware, but it is not possible to call all malware viruses.
Starting from this point, we can say that malware removal applications provide much more focused protection than virus scanners and offer opportunities to save your system from an infection.
As with a virus scanner, once installed on your machine, an anti-malware software allows you to scan the system to check for any malware. In other words, malware scanners work in the same way as virus scanners. In the main menu of the application (or maybe a submenu) a “Scan”
You will have the option to quarantine for flagged malware. Or automatic quarantine of malware can also be provided. Quarantine is, as you can imagine, the confinement of a file to a cordoned area of the system where it can no longer reach or harm your device or data.
Besides malware, Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUP for short – Potentially Unwanted Programs) can also be scanned. As the name suggests, these are apps that you might not want on your system. They don’t need to be automatically quarantined as they don’t actively do any harm, so it’s usually up to you to take action on them.
This on-demand scan is included with all anti-malware software, and one approach some people use is to simply install a free malware removal app on their system as a backup of a primary antivirus.
In other words, this method basically involves relying on the antivirus for defense and periodically running a manual scan with a second line of defense (anti-malware). It could just be a PUP and not directly malware, but still, it’s possible that you have software on your system that you don’t want and a second scan can help with that.
Malware removal software can give you more than just on-demand scanning, and some apps offer real-time defense the same as an antivirus. Real-time protection means that the anti-malware tool is a permanent shield that examines every file added to your system (and any currently running processes) for anything suspicious.
This gives you more protection and means you can run an anti-malware application as your preliminary protection against malware.
It’s important to remember that anti-malware is designed to find new threats that an antivirus software might miss. You can also get a broader level of protection, such as web defense (against phishing and other online scams) for safer browsing, as well as anti-ransomware technology.
Whatever the case, anti-malware apps offer good protection against malware (and the likes of PUPs), and as we’ve seen, the good ones can work on multiple levels, just like antivirus.
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