Malware Remover vs Anti Virus Cleaner: What’s the Difference?

anti malware

Especially for businesses, it’s increasingly important to ensure that adequate malware removers and spam cleaners or spam filters are installed on servers. Cybercrime is rife, especially as a result of the pandemic, and businesses are a top target for spam emails with viruses.

However, malware removers and anti virus cleaners are often confused when there are actually some key differences between the two. It’s crucial to understand these differences, and the advantages and disadvantages of them both, before opting for any security softwares.

The Importance of Cyber Security

In today’s internet age, having adequate cyber security couldn’t be more important. Gone are the days of conventional spam emails that look like the brands we recognise day to day. You’d click on one, not realising the difference between the original and fake, and immediately your computer would begin to play up. However, malware that is often hidden in spam emails will now find a place to hide in a file-like location on your computer and wait until it wants to activate itself further down the line. This means you could potentially have viruses on your computer that are effectively a ticking time bomb.

This makes it important to know the differences between malware removers and anti-virus cleaners because, although they may be perceived by a lot of people as doing the same thing, there are subtle differences between the two. It’s important to understand these differences so you can wipe away any harmful viruses and better defend your computer in the future.

What is an Antivirus Cleaner?

Whilst a virus is a malware, a malware isn’t always a virus because malware is more of a catch-all phrase, whereas a virus is a more specific software issue. An antivirus software offers protection against harmful viruses and the various problems that can proliferate from them if they aren’t addressed quickly. These include trojans, keyloggers, rootkits, packdoors, phishing attacks and botnets.

Virus cleaning softwares works by scanning your entire computer in the background, searching for any potential viruses. Most softwares are able to do this in the background so you can carry on using your computer as you normally would. These cleaning softwares block malicious script files and prevent them from running which is often called a ‘heuristic analysis’. Specific anti-spam softwares can also be installed from leading providers like us at MailCleaner if you’re after better email security.

Advantages

Whilst antivirus cleaners aren’t as effective at removing certain types of malware because it doesn’t have the necessary tools to do so, they search for issues much more extensively than malware removers. Plus, you can often opt for a variety of tailored features such as anti spam, phishing protection, email cleaners, browser protection and system optimisation. One of the key ways they can be optimised is to provide a spam filter and email cleaner feature. This is incredibly important for businesses with a large amount of email addresses because viruses can spread very quickly unless they’re tackled preemptively.

If you opt for a software that updates itself automatically then you won’t need to worry about your virus cleaner failing to detect and address new threats that didn’t exist when you first installed the software. However, this is something to check before you decide to buy an antivirus cleaner as they aren’t an industry standard.

It’s worth noting that antivirus cleaner softwares are a cost effective means of protecting your computers and servers. Whilst some are free of charge, a lot of companies like us here at MailCleaner offer package deals for large businesses and these can be based on a subscription model so you won’t need to worry about renewing your software in the future.

Disadvantages

As extensive as they might be, antivirus cleaners generally don’t have the necessary tools to remove certain types of  malware which means they don’t offer full protection. This will mean your computer likely has ‘security holes’ that need to be addressed via a different method, usually with malware removers. If your security hole is email-based then our email cleaners and anti spam filters will be of huge benefit.

Another disadvantage is that they will reduce the speed of your computer as they’re being run and, depending on how often you conduct scans, this can be for a significant amount of the time whilst the scan is taking place.

What is Malware Remover?

Whilst it’s true that antivirus software usually has some tools to remove active viruses, these days viruses are much more sophisticated. As has been covered, there may be viruses on your computer that you don’t know about and that will be activated at a later date. This means that, because they aren’t active yet, they might fail to be detected by a and removed by a generic antivirus software check. Alternatively, a malware remover provides your computer with the tool necessary to actually remove the virus once it’s been detected. These tools are much more capable of removing viruses than those found in anti-virus cleaning software because this is their primary focus.

Advantages

A malware remover is a great choice because they’re much more powerful and capable of removing viruses than the majority of anti-virus cleaners. They’re an extremely good way of plugging those ‘malware holes’ that aren’t covered by anti virus cleaners. Plus, their deep scanning capabilities mean they can deal with all kinds of additional malware which will put your mind at ease in the long run.

Malware removals are particularly good for offering online banking security for safer online shopping and they’re also particularly effective against blocking scam and phishing websites from your browser. They’ll also stop frustrating applications that switch your default browser and constantly send you back to your home page.

Disadvantages

Because they’re a more powerful type of software than antivirus cleaners, malware removers will use significantly more of your computer’s processing power to get the job done. Not only this but it’s likely you’ll need to conduct a hard reset because, where antivirus cleaners are searching, malware removers are forcefully deleting possible threats.

As hijackers’ and online thieves’ methods become ever-more sophisticated, the increased capabilities of malware removers will be able to detect their various methods and remove these threats much faster and more effectively. However, they don’t offer much more protection for more standard methods like email spamming that are already covered by anti virus cleaners and specialist spam cleaners like us here at MailCleaner.

How Will Malware Remover and Anti Virus Cleaners Benefit Your Business?

It’s crucial that businesses and organisations of all sizes have adequate cyber security measures in place, whether it’s a malware remover or an anti-spam software. Ideally, you’ll opt for a combination of the two as the advantages and disadvantages of both softwares balance one another out.

Up to 2020, cybercrime, spam, phishing and viruses cost the global economy more than 1 trillion US dollars which is 1% of the world’s GDP and which is a 50% increase from 2018. Throughout the pandemic in the UK where businesses and organisations looked more and more toward remote working, attacks on businesses increased by a staggering 20%. As a result of these trends, securing your business operations by installing adequate anti virus cleaner and malware removers has never been more important.

Quite frankly, cyber attacks and viruses can lose you profits, customers, sales and valuable information. Customers will be less likely to opt for your services in the future if they know your previous customers’ information was leaked or hacked. Not only this but your staff’s morale will increase by having email cleaners and anti spam filters in place that will stop annoying phishing emails.

Plus, having adequate security software installed will also make your business more attractive to future investors who will see less risk involved with your business or organisation. It’ll also likely increase your customer base as potential customers will feel more secure in choosing your services over your competitors.

Choose a Specialist Email Spam Cleaner

Here at MailCleaner, we understand the importance of having top-quality cyber security. This is why we’ve created an excellent anti virus cleaner that will provide an anti spam filter for your emails, because phishing is so rife in today’s day and age. Hence, we make sure that 99% of unwanted messages are completely blocked preemptively by our spam cleaner software.

Whether you’re a government body, an educational institution, a large corporation, or some other form of organization, we have competitive prices and offer special discounts for large orders. If you have any further questions about anti virus cleaners and spam filters then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us by calling +41 21 695 20 20 for our Switzerland office or +1 718 374 5450 for our Canada office!