ClamXav for Mac Review

ClamXav for Mac Review

ClamXav for Mac Review -Once upon a time, if you wanted Mac antivirus software, ClamXav was one of your only options. The free open-source antivirus program, developed by Mark Allan since 2004, is a graphical user interface for running the ClamAV open-source antivirus engine.

Unfortunately, ClamXav hasn't kept up with other Mac antivirus options. We looked at five different Mac antivirus products, including the current ClamXav 2.6.4. When put to the test, ClamXav 2 … clammed up.

Setup and interface
Setting up ClamXav 2 on my MacBook Air was quick and easy. The installer, available at clamxav.com, walks you through downloading the antivirus engine (which contains the malware detection) and setting up automatic updates. You can also get a slightly different version of ClamXav 2 from the Mac App Store. After installation, ClamXav 2 launches and begins its first definition update.

ClamXav 2 has the starkest interface of all the Mac antivirus programs we reviewed. It looks like another window of the Mac OS X's Finder; files being scanned are listed in alternating blue and white rows, as in older versions of Mac OS X and iTunes.

Before starting a scan, you must choose which files on your hard drive you want scanned. You can either click the "+" button beneath the Source List in ClamXav 2, or navigate to the target file or volume and drag it right into the Source List. I dragged in the entire Macintosh HD volume.

To begin the scan, highlight the desired folder or volume in the Source List by clicking on it, and then click the green Start Scan button at the top of the window. ClamXav 2 has no prepared full-scan or quick-scan options.

The other buttons at the top of ClamXav 2's panel are for updating its list of virus definitions, viewing a log of scans, viewing a log of updates and a Preferences button. (In Preferences, you can create a whitelist of file types you don't want ClamXav 2 to scan.)

You can schedule anti-malware scans, but the scheduler is buried away under the Preferences button. (If you only glanced at ClamXav 2, you might think scheduled scans aren't possible.) Among other Mac antivirus tools, Sophos Antivirus for Mac Home Edition and Intego Mac Internet Security X8 also allow scheduled scans; Avast Free Antivirus for Mac and Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac do not.

Features and tools
One component of ClamXav 2, called ClamXav Sentry, automatically scans imported files as they're copied onto your Mac. For some reason, ClamXav Sentry only comes with the version of ClamXav 2 found on the ClamXav website. The App Store version of ClamXav 2 doesn't contain this feature, which we nonetheless considered very important. (The Mac antivirus programs from Avast, Bitdefender, Sophos and Intego have similar file-scanning features.)

In addition to scanning files, ClamXav 2 also has the option to scan email content for malicious attachments and phishing attempts.

ClamXav 2 is an antivirus scanner only, without extra features. It can't stop malware from installing itself via a drive-by browser download, for example. But it can also detect Windows malware on a Mac, as can the other Mac antivirus products we reviewed. Windows malware can't harm a Mac computer, but it can spread via Macs to other Windows computers.

ClamXav also doesn't have any kind of Web-link scanning component, for detecting malicious links and Web pages as you browse the Internet. Avast, Bitdefender and Sophos all have some form of this feature built into their products. ClamXav users could always cover this absence with a Web-link-scanning browser plugin, such as Bitdefender's TrafficLight, but ClamXav's lack of one counts against it.

Possibly because ClamXav is an ongoing open-source project, ClamXav 2 has next to nothing in the way of customer support. Users with questions will have to consult the ClamXav forums.