Acronis Privacy Expert Suite review

This is a powerful all-in-one security and privacy solution that not only provides effective protection from different kinds of spyware, adware, trojans, keyloggers and rootkits, but also helps keeping the system as clean as possible.

Acronis Privacy Expert Suite performs long deep scan in order to thoroughly check the Windows registry, memory, all files and folders on all local hard drives. The program can be configured to perform faster scans of user-defined locations. However, even deep system scan is relatively fast – it usually takes only 5-7 minutes to complete.

Unfortunately, the scan engine of Acronis Privacy Expert Suite is not very effective. It misses some malicious files, registry entries and running processes related to widely spread, well known parasites, not to mention emerging, uninvestigated threats.

The application comes with Malware Shield, the real-time monitor, which runs in background and eliminates running malicious processes and active spyware tasks that attempt to modify essential system settings. Sad to say, but it is disabled in the free version.

Acronis Privacy Expert Suite has a lot of privacy tools. Internet Clean-up is a collection of utilities designed to clear web browser's cache, cookies and downloaded components, destruct Internet passwords, data stored in Forms AutoComplete, e-mail messages and contacts. These utilities also erase typed Internet addresses and the last visited pages list. System Clean-up includes a variety of functions that allow wiping out temporary files, the recently used documents list, history of some system components, passwords. Application Traces Clean-up erases user's activity traces stored in some installed software.

The program offers additional system and privacy tools. Drive Cleanser can wipe out selected partitions and disks, File Shredder allows unrecoverably erasing selected files, Paging File Cleaner can be used to enable or disable Windows swap file clean-up.

Acronis Privacy Expert Suite also provides the Pop-up Blocker tool. This separate, reliable utility blocks all the pop-up windows in Internet Explorer.

The free version refuses to remove any malware it finds. A lot of program functions and tools are disabled. Full functionality is available only in full commercial version.

The official web site is www.acronis.com. Purchases are made using secure connection.