| Type | Limited Proprietary Company |
|---|---|
| Founded | February 25, 2003 |
| Headquarters | North Sydney, Australia |
| Number of locations | Australia United States United Kingdom Ukraine Ireland |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Dave Cole (Vice President and General Manager) |
| Products | see below |
| Employees | 200+ |
| Website | pctools.com |
PC Tools (founded in 2003[1]), formerly known as WinGuides.com[2], is a software company headquartered in Australia with offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland and Ukraine. The company develops and distributes security and optimization software for the Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms. There are over 200 employees. PC Tools has won nearly 100 separate awards for its products.
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PC Tools distributes anti-malware and system utilities software to consumers around the world. By November 29, 2006, software owned by PC Tools were downloaded over 125 million times.[3]
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PC Tools Browser Defender[4], also called Browser Defender for short, is a browser toolbar for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers on Windows based computers. Browser Defender allows for safe web surfing.
PC Tools Internet Security[9], previously known as PC Tools Firewall Plus, is a personal firewall. It is a payware designed for Windows 7 (32-/64-bit), Windows Vista (32-/64-bit) and Windows XP (32-bit).
The program is a two-way firewall, monitoring incoming and outgoing traffic from a computer.
PC Tools Registry Mechanic[12], is software used to scan registry to find errors. This product was the first software PC Tools released.[19] The most recent version is 11, which was released on October 31, 2011.
PC Tools Spyware Doctor[14], is anti-malware software. Even though Spyware Doctor can remove dangerous software, it can't block hidden viruses and spyware. The most recent version of Spyware Doctor is 9, which was released on October 31, 2011.
PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus[15], just like Spyware Doctor, is anti-malware software. Although, Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus has the same features as Spyware Doctor, but with more features, like blocking viruses. The most recent version is 9, which was also released on October 31, 2011.
ThreatExpert[18], is an advanced automated threat analysis system (initialized ATAS) built to analyze and report the actions of malware in a fully automated mode.[20]
On August 18, 2008, Symantec announced the signing of an agreement to acquire PC Tools such that PC Tools would maintain separate operations.[21] The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Symantec acquired PC Tools for $262,000,000 on October 6, 2008.[22]