At Lavasoft, our mission is to develop and deliver high quality anti-spyware solutions. For us, it is a partnership - you provide the real-world experience and we provide the in-depth analysis, resulting in an up-to-date Detection Database that protects over 350 million users worldwide. The Lavasoft Threat Analysis (TA) process enables you to easily understand what constitutes an annoying threat and what should be recognized as high risk to your privacy and security. By identifying the threat and TA index level of every object found in a scan, you can quickly decide if the threat needs to be removed.

Note: Threat Analysis Index was previously known as the Threat Assessment Chart (TAC).

At Lavasoft, we analyze threats to your security, so you don't have to. After scanning with Ad-Aware, you know exactly what is lurking on your computer, as well as the danger it may pose to your privacy and security. Not only that, but Ad-Aware's real-time protection can alert you to malicious processes and infected programs that try to start or run on your PC. All threats to your security are identified by category and by their TA index level, so it only takes a quick glance to recognize what has been detected. Our straightforward system is shown in the TA Index Visual above.

Potential threats are analyzed using specific criteria. The weights of the criteria are tallied, to give the threat a specific TA index level. This determines if the threat should be added to our Definition File, and gives you the power to make quick decisions about what to do with detected spyware and malware.

When creating the TA index level, the behavior of the threat carries a stronger weight than its technical aspects; if the malware secretly attaches without your full understanding and approval, then the threat is automatically given higher TA points.

The TA point system is based on a 10-point scale, with 1 representing the lowest threat and 10 representing the highest. A minimum TA value of 3 is required before the malware is put into detection by the Malware Labs at Lavasoft. Definition File candidates that receive more that 10 points will default to an index level of 10.