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Heuristics is only incorporated in the Internet Mail provider, avast uses generic signatures to try to detect new variants of previously detected malware.

I don’t understand what you mean by proactive protection, it means many things to many people, I don’t know what you have been reading so have nothing to use as a reference.

You could consider pro-active measures outside of just your AV or firewall, in order to place files in the system folders and create registry entries you need permission. Prevention is much better and theoretically easier than cure.

Whilst browsing or collecting email, etc. if you get infected then the malware by default inherits the same permissions that you have for your user account. So if the user account has administrator rights, the malware has administrator rights and can reap havoc. With limited rights the malware can’t put files in the system folders, create registry entries, etc. This greatly reduces the potential harm that can be done by an undetected or first day virus, etc.

Check out the link to DropMyRights (in my signature below) - Browsing the Web and Reading E-mail Safely as an Administrator. This obviously applies to those NT based OSes that have administrator settings, winNT, win2k, winXP.

The Windows Vista version of IE 7 will provide a Protected Mode that gives the browser sufficient rights to browse the Web, but not enough rights to modify user settings or data. Protected Mode will only be available to Vista users because the functionality depends on the reworked user account system in Windows Vista. Vista’s version of IE 7 will also be able to automatically install security and other updates; that will not be the case in the XP version.