I am a huge fan of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. It provides the same level of virus protection as the pay-for packages—don’t be fooled, the differences are bells and whistles—and because it’s trimmed down it eats up less resources. I always install it as part of a comprehensive approach using several free Windows security tools. However, how many times have you seen this at the bottom of an e-mail?

No virus found in this incoming message.

Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com

Version: 8.0.169 / Virus Database: 270.6.14/1647 - Release Date: 9/2/2008 6:02 AM

This is especially great in e-mail conversations, where I’ll see this same text stacked up five, ten, fifteen times at the bottom. It’s a tremendous waste of space and makes scanning an e-mail conversation difficult to say the least. I don’t need to know that you have anti-virus software installed. If I did, I wouldn’t have installed it on my own computer. Duh. AVG does this by default, and they don’t make it obvious at install time how to disable it. It may have something to do with the shameless plug they put in there, but I could be wrong. If you want to get rid of the stupid thing, here’s how to do it in version 8…

* Double-click the AVG icon in your taskbar to bring up the control panel window. * Go the menu bar, choose **Tools**, then **Advanced Settings...** * Choose **E-mail Scanner** from the left-hand menu * In the right-hand pane, clear the checkbox labeled **Certify e-mail**. * Click the OK button at the bottom