Emsisoft Anti-Malware 11.0

Four colored panels dominate the large main window of Emsisoft Anti-Malware. If the left-most one, titled Protection, is green, it means everything is configured and operating correctly.

Emsisoft's scan scheduler goes beyond simple daily, weekly, or monthly scanning. You can also set it to scan at intervals, or each time the system starts up, or after every signature update.

In addition to the expected quick scan and full malware scan, Emsisoft offers a highly configurable custom scan.

Working through Emsisoft's many configuration pages you'll find that you can make it work exactly the way you want. For example, you can set it to scan files only when they're about to execute, or silently quarantine malware without a popup.

In its default configuration, Emsisoft quarantines any malware it finds and displays a transient notification popup.

Emsisoft displays a number of different kinds of transient popup notifications. You can control which types are displayed, and define their duration.

Most antivirus products steer the browser away from malware-hosting URLs, displaying a warning page instead. Emsisoft completely blocks the browser's access, leaving an error message, and notifies you with a transient popup.

Some programs are undesirable without being provably malicious. You can choose whether Emsisoft detects these potentially unwanted programs.

In testing, Emsisoft's behavior alert system activated only for valid programs, not for any malware. This montage shows alerts for two valid PCMag utilities. Note that the recommended action is to quarantine the program.

Emsisoft handles blocking phishing sites the same way it does malware-hosting sites, by completely blocking the browser and displaying a transient popup. It earned a very good score against malware-hosting URLs, but not nearly as good against phishing sites.