Is Your Antivirus Really Protecting You? Try This Simple Test to Find Out

Dear All,

To test if your antivirus is in good working condition, you should follow these steps:

Open Notepad and copy this text:

X5O!P%@AP[4PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

the text should be in one horizontal line
Then save the file as "eicar.com" including quotation marks. After a few seconds of saving this file, your antivirus should detect it as an infected virus and ask for permission for its deletion or cleaning. This file is secure and will not infect your computer in any way. It is a standard text developed by the European Institute for Computer Anti-virus Research (EICAR). Every antivirus program is designed to recognize this file as a virus.

If your antivirus does not detect this file as a virus, a DOS window will appear on your screen with the text "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE". If this happens, you should consider finding another up-to-date antivirus, as your PC may already be infected with viruses that your current antivirus software does not recognize.

Regards,

Mohsin Sen

Thank you for this wonderful information. However, I think most of the antivirus programs will detect this. Is there a strong way to determine if an antivirus program is really worth it?