If you’re suspecting that your computer is infected with viruses and/or malware, you can conduct a free online scan of your computer using QuickScan from BitDefender. It combines local scanning and in-the-cloud scanning to quickly detect security threats to the computer scanned.
The free online QuickScan from BitDefender can, however, be done only from Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox browsers. It will install a plugin / add-on to your browser, due to which it is very lightweight. There is no need to download virus scanner engine to your computer. Once the plugin / add-on is installed, QuickScan can conduct an online quick virus scan for your full computer. Scanning of suspicious items on your computer is done remotely, just by pushing a button, using the BitDefender anti-virus / anti-malware technologies (see figure below):
BitDefender QuickScan, therefore, does not need any software to be installed on your computer other than a small browser plugin / add-on. This implies that there is no need to do any configuration tasks or to keep updating virus signature files from time to time since the virus scan takes place online on its servers. Since most of the virus scan operations are performed remotely on the BitDefender servers, it won’t slow down your computer. It can run online from any Internet connected PC / laptop. QuickScan can also detect hidden threats (rootkits) and keyloggers.
The online virus scan / malware detection is very fast. BitDefender QuickScan took about 177 seconds to scan 1278 files on my computer using this online service. You’ll get a detailed log file for results of the quick scan of viruses. See the following figure showing quick virus scan running on my computer:
After the quick scan, BitDefender add-on may upload some files on your computer to its servers for detailed scan on its servers; however, the uploading process is automatic but you can stop uploading the files if you don’t want that. In fact, Quickscan makes an inventory of the programs that are running on your computer and then tells its server about the files found. The server can recognize a file through its hash, that is like a digital fingerprint of the file and is unique to every file. Therefore, if a file matches with a recognizable hash, that means the file is safe and not infected. However, if the server doesn’t recognize a file, which means that its hash is not recognizable, it requests the file to be uploaded to it. Over a period of time when more people use the QuickScan, most of the files would already have recognizable hash stored on its servers, which means that such programs or files would become “already known” to the server and therefore it would obviate the need for uploading files by other people in future.
Thus, BitDefender QuickScan runs the virus scan using the cloud-computing principles. So, while it scans your local computer with a minimal browser plugin / add-on, the actual operations take place on its servers and it uses its collections of hashes of the files already scanned for viruses by other people.
Another important thing worth noting is that Quickscan does not modify or delete any file on your system and only uploads certain executables to its servers (if needed) for checking on the servers. Thus, your computer is safe. However, it will only inform you about viruses / malware found on your system and it will not any viruses.
Since, it is absolutely free to scan your computer with QuickScan from BitDefender and it is very fast without slowing down your computer, you can give it a try.
Link: QuickScan from BitDefender.
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well you’re saying it an online scanning but it gives a exe file to install in my computer.
Thanks
TC
It is a browser extension.