Antivir is an anti-virus package that's recently taken the top virus detection spot, despite being a free product.

In Virus Bulletin testing – independent and thorough, repeated every month with the viruses that are out in the wild - it scored higher than Symantec, McAfee, AVG and Panda.

In fact, it took the top two places in the form of rebadged WebWasher and its self-branded Antivir with 99.89 per cent and 99.86 per cent respectively.

In comparison Symantec picked up 99.08 per cent of viruses, AVG 95.25 per cent.

It only uses 3.8Mbytes of Ram, much less than its competitors, and the company's director of business development proudly states this is because 65 per cent of its revenues go into software development and only 35 per cent on everything else like advertising. Most software houses do it the other way round.

After some gentle digging I was told it’s a German family run company with 15m German speaking users and now it's pushing into the English speaking market.

Many people may be confused as to why a free antivirus product can have a higher virus detection rate than Symantec's and McAfee's paid for anti-virus products.

Well, it's 100 per cent family-owned which makes a profit and has zero debt. Perhaps it has a refreshingly different outlook to profit-driven security companies?

Their CEO and founder is described as a modest man who is focussed on technical excellence. Both of his sons are also involved with the company.

Adding to the good guy image, if you buy the paid for version which includes firewall, support and pop3 filter for €20 (£13), Avira (the parent company) donates €5 to a charity.

With the complaints we've had regarding AVG's free version (due to their massive push to get you to buy the full version), this could become "the next AVG".