Previously I’ve tested and reviewed free Rising Antivirus. In my opinion, it is a very good antivirus which I will prefer to use if I had to choose between AVG and Rising Antivirus. However, many people would avoid using Rising Antivirus just because it is developed in Beijing China, where the 2008 Olympics will be held, as there are news saying that China is a home to half of all malicious websites. I think this perception is wrong.
Anyway, different people has different thinking and I don’t want to argue about that. I am here to do what I do best, which is to find interesting stuff and share with you guys everyday without fail. Today I will share with you another free antivirus which I discovered and this AV is developed in United States. It is made by a very well known vulnerability and security research company called eEye Digital Security. Let’s check it out…
Blink Personal provides home PC protection plus Internet Security. Including all-in-one antivirus, antispyware, antiphishing, identity theft protection, plus personal firewalls.Blink’s interface is intuitive and easy to use because it resembles Windows XP’s streamlined Control Panel, and icons include summaries of configuration details.
Blink Personal Features:
Firewall – Controls network traffic to and from this system, permitting or denying communications based on a set of rules. Virus and Spyware Protection – Performs in-memory protection and disk scanning for computer threats such as viruses, worms, trojans, adware and spyware. Intrusion Prevention – Monitors network activities for malicious or unwanted behavior and reacts in real-time to block or prevent those activities. Vulnerability Assessment – Scans the local machine and identifies missing patches, misconfigurations and poor security settings. System Protection – Provides proactive, host-based security against zero-day attacks.
Is Blink FREE?
There are 2 versions of Blink, the Personal and Professional edition. The Blink Personal Edition normally cost $24.95 and the Professional edition cost $29. Currently eEye is giving away their Blink Personal edition for you to use for a year if you live in the United States and Canada, or for 30 days if you live outside of these countries. I’ve tried setting my clock few months ahead and it tells me that my license has expired. The weird thing is when I hit the back button and then the Next button to re-enter the old serial number, it allows me to use Blink Personal Edition again.
Is Blink effective against computer security threats?
I’ve tested Blink against a few public version of trojans which can be detected by other antivirus program and it can immediately warns me that a backdoor is found. Unfortunately Blink is unable to detect any backdoor when I tested it with private version of trojan. A private version of trojan is meant to avoid being detected by an antivirus program. If the antivirus fails to detect it, then I can say that its heuristic detection is not that good. One thing I can be sure of is Blink can protect you from most of zero day exploits and vulnerabilities.
Is Blink light on system resources?
From the official website, it mentioned that Blink is extremely lightweight and the Blink endpoint protection agent runs at around 60MB. From Sysinternals Process Explorer, I see that there are 4 processes that belongs to Blink. All 4 processes takes up 124MB memory usage! That is a freaking bloated internet security software and they dare to say that Blink is EXTREMELY lightweight?
So there’s my review on eEye Blink Personal Edition. Now you tell me whether would you use Blink Personal Edition to protect your computer against internet security threats?