Is your virus scanner working?

Anti Virus software checks our PC for malicious viruses, spyware and adware. After scanning, it eliminates them with your permission.

But how do we check whether our anti virus software is really working?
Timothy solves (y)our query in his blog Life Hacker.

"The EICAR virus test is a harmless text file that is detected as a virus by most AV vendors. You can use it to verify that your local virus scanner is working. Just copy the string into a plain text file), check to see if your email server scans for viruses (email yourself a copy), and test if scanners detect viruses inside archives (put it inside a zip file)."

Recently, I used Google Updater and downloaded free version of Spyware Doctor and it seems to be working well within its capability. I will check if it reports EICAR.

Thank you Timothy.