It continually warns me that my software is not genuine, but that's because I didn't enter a genuine key. I did have a little bit of trouble updating it initially, but once I got that worked out, it updates and functions normally. I've been running a copy of this on an older Dell for testing purposes for nearly a year now. But as far as any backdoors or rootkits being present that's NOT already included in the standard Windows 7 operating system, it don't appear so. It's at the very least malware and spyware. But aside from that, this one works! As far as viruses go, I couldn't say.