Application Control

Many applications are often launched in the background without your knowledge, and some of them could very well be malicious. If you want to keep a close eye on them, you can try relying on Application Control.

It is a small, portable program that notifies you whenever an unknown process is launched, giving you the option of either allowing or blocking it. A fairly rudimentary utility, but it can get the job done.

While Application Control is running, it displays a notification whenever an unknown program is launched, and then shuts it down after a couple of seconds. You can specify whether the process should be allowed in the future or remain blocked.

The utility calculates the Sha-256 hash of every launched application and then compares it to the entries stored in the allowed.pc and blocked.pc files. The notification is only displayed if no matching entry is found.

However, it is worth noting that the software does not stop blocked programs from being launched, but merely shuts then down after one or two seconds.

Application Control is certainly not a complex program, as there is nothing to configure aside from the allowed and blocked lists; this can be done by opening them in a standard text editor.

The software runs in the background and can be accessed from the system tray whenever you wish to turn it off or open the configuration files.

A notification sound is also played whenever a new application is detected, but it would have been great if there was an option to disable it or replace it with a different one.

Every file created by the application is stored in the root folder, so you don’t need to worry about temporary files or registry entries that need to be removed later. You can even run the program from portable storage devices and use it on the go.

Overall, Application Control is a straightforward tool that can help you keep a close eye on all program launches in order to keep malicious software at bay. It can be useful in some scenarios, but you have to remember it still allows blocked applications to be run, if only for one or two seconds.