The end had long been in its making, but everything decisively fell through when my computer crashed twice in a row last year, and I lost all my data including my virus vault, where I used to keep samples of viruses, trojans, worms and other sorts of malware, dating from the 1990s to the present. Not backing up my computer has never cost me so dearly. Although not entirely impossible, I don't want to go through the trouble of building another virus vault from scratch either, so this is goodbye.

In my defence, I no longer have the means to test how good an antivirus really is. Very few sites reviewing antiviruses actually test them themselves, and megasites like Download.com continue to dish out 'antivirus reviews' largely based on scan speeds etc, without even including factors like how good an antivirus is in detecting or eliminating viruses in their rating of the particular product. (Here's Download.com's review policy for antivirus software.) I didn't want to be part of the mimicking crowd, and tried my best to be an alternate voice in security software testing, albeit in my laid-back, casual way. I would test an antivirus for weeks at a stretch before I was absolutely sure of my opinion. Only then would I proceed to write my review. Now that I've suffered this setback, I'd rather withdraw from the game than join the crowd of 'antivirus reviewers'.

Is it that hard to crash-test antivirus software, or any software for optimum usability? No. Must we always depend on organizations such as AV-Comparatives to tell us how good or bad an antivirus actually is? We could always do with another voice. My findings, for instance, have often disagreed with AV-Comparatives'. There's certainly room for further examination here.

On a personal note, AV Scan hasn't managed to receive as many links as I would've liked. But that doesn't mean I'm being ungrateful -- thank you to everybody who visited AV Scan, and those who posted comments get extra kudos from me. It's all been a worthwhile experience.

Finally, I've decided not to delete this blog and pull the plug entirely, since like people and software, antiviruses too exhibit similar behavioral traits across versions. Norton for instance (which ironically happens to be the world's most popular antivirus software and is consistently ranked as a 4- or 5-star product) is still plagued by many of its ancient problems. Old reviews can always serve as good references.

Have a good life! And stay safe, both digitally and not!