Publication
About this publication
Antivirus Reference is an independent, reader-facing reference on how consumer security software is licensed and activated. This page records who publishes it, what it covers and what it deliberately leaves out.
Who publishes it
Antivirus Reference (antivirusreference.com) is written and published by MUDRAKOLA JOYROSY, based in Huzurabad, India. The publisher has no commercial relationship with any software maker named on the site and receives nothing from any of them.
What it covers
Three reference articles describe the mechanics of consumer security subscriptions: how a product key becomes an entitlement in an account, what a suite installs and what the operating system requires of it, and how the makers’ own web addresses can be distinguished from pages built to resemble them. Thirteen maker references then describe, one maker at a time, how Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, McAfee, Norton, Sophos, Trend Micro (whose consumer business now trades as TrendLife) and Webroot license their consumer products, together with the built-in protections of Windows and macOS.
How the facts are checked
Each article carries the date on which its statements were compared with the makers’ own documentation, and lists the documents consulted at its foot. Where a maker’s documentation and a third-party source disagree, the maker’s documentation is followed. When a maker changes a name or an address, as Trend Micro’s consumer business did in April 2026, the article is revised and the check date is moved.
What it does not do
- It does not sell, resell or distribute software, product keys or subscriptions, and it hosts no installers.
- It offers no assistance with any account, device, purchase or renewal, and does not answer questions of that kind by any channel.
- It publishes no telephone number, operates no chat line, and never asks anyone for remote access to a computer.
- No company named on its pages is connected to it by affiliation, endorsement or sponsorship.
Readers who need to act on a subscription do so in the account on the maker’s own domain; the articles describe how those accounts work but do not stand in for them.
Corrections
Errors of fact are corrected in the article and noted at its foot with the date of the change. Corrections and documentary evidence are welcome at joyrosyref@gmail.com. See the editorial standards and funding page for how submissions are handled.