You may remember Ad-Aware, one of the first and the most popular anti-spyware software at one time. Over a period of time, there were user reports that it had become bloatware and as a result of it, its popularity decreased over the years. Moreover antivirus companies started including anti-spyware definitions too, in their security software, thereby marginalizing most good anti-spyware software like Ad-Aware and SpyBot. Later on Ad-Aware too started offering anti-virus protection along with its anti-spyware protection. The free version of Ad-Ware, however, did not offer real-time protection, and therefore there were not many takers for it.

But now there seems to be great news! Lavasoft, the makers of Ad-Aware have decided to include real-time protection, network protection, registry protection, download protection and more in their free version of Ad-Aware.

Porting so many of the features of its Ad-Aware Pro to Ad-Ware Free 10, now makes it a direct competitor to many of the other good free anti-virus and security software available on the internet.

Apart from offering you protection from virus and spyware, Ad-ware Free will now offer the following:

1. Real-time process protection: Adware Free will now offer active protection and block malicious processes which try to infect your computer.
2. Real-time network protection: It will now also monitor outgoing network traffic and block connections to blacklisted IP addresses and known malicious websites.
3. Real-time registry protection: It will detect, attempted changes to the Windows registry, a favorite target for many malware distributors, and alert you when a program tries to make changes to it.
4. Download Protection: It will now also automatically scans files before they are downloaded and detect malware before it can be launched.
5. Optional Toolbar: It offers an optional toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox, to scan URLs.
6. Game Mode: Ad-Aware was the first free antivirus program to include a game mode. Game Mode will suspend security alerts, system scans and auto-updates while you work or play without compromising your security.

Download page: Ad-Aware Free.