I stumbled across a development today online in which a company claims it is the world’s first antivirus browser. While the reality is a little more far-fetched than the label, Epic Browser has some interesting features.
Update 7/18/2010 4:22 pm PST : (Epic Browser Publishers wrote a rebuttal to the original review. I will publish it in its entirety below.)
I do not agree to the claim made by the review. It does not go to ESET’s
website at any point of time, unless one wants to purchase a premium
edition. The browser provides for downloading the virus definitions and
scanning any file/folder or the entire system without any online scan,
as the review claims. Everything is taken care off locally (except
downloading the definitions). Also, any downloaded file via the browser
(one of the most common ways of getting infected) is scanned
automatically at the end of the download. Albeit, the browser’s AV does
not do real-time protection (Malicious files transferred via an external
drive cannot be treated unless the user scans for it manually via the
browser).
I made a misstatement about how the antivirus scan is performed.
First, the epic browser is designed for the Indian Market and allows Indians to type in all 10 of their native languages. The browser is also based on the Mozilla engine and therefore is compatible with all of the current firefox add-ons. Epic Browser also includes a handy sidebar and a lot of shortcuts to different security applications within one click.
As far as the antivirus goes, it can be accessed via the sidebar by clicking on the antivirus icon. A new side bar is loaded and gives the user the option to scan a file or scan the computer for viruses. The antivirus engine is also powered by ESET which has excellent protection. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything different from the online scan that ESET offers and the “antivirus sidebarâ€. Therefore all epic does is provide a button that essentially clicks on the ESET website to start an online scan. While this in itself isn’t a problem, the fact that Epic Browser advertises itself as the “first antivirus browser†the functionality doesn’t really live up to the claim. This is because the browser doesn’t include always on scanning or some type of resident shield that automatically scans temporary files or critical browser files (to Epic Browser’s credit it does scan downloads). The antivirus functionality is also supposedly the strongest feature of the browser. In reality its only a small icon dwarfed by hundreds of other add-ons.
An alternative option to epic browser would be to simply download a normal version of firefox. A user could then put links to five free online scanners Eset, Bitdefender, and Norton etc. One could then install Bitdefender Quickscan and a handful of the highest rated security and privacy add-ons from Mozilla. All of a sudden, one has built a browser that is more streamlined and secure than Epic Browser.
