Check if your Antivirus is doing his job

Have you ever wondered how to test your Antivirus software to ensure it’s proper working? Well here is an old trick to check if your Antivirus is working properly.

The process is called EICAR test which will work on any antivirus and was developed by European Institute of Computer Antivirus Research. This process can be used by people, companies and antivirus programmers to test the proper functioning of the antivirus/antimalware software without having to deal with the real computer virus which can cause damage to the computer. Here is a step-by-step procedure to test your antivirus.

1. Open notepad
2. Copy this code in the text file without quotes

"X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*"

3. Then save it with the name fakevirus.exe

If this file got deleted immediately, that means your antivirus is working. This test will cause no damage to your computer even though the antivirus will flag it as a malicious script. Hence it is the safest method to test the proper functioning of any antivirus.