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News Flaw in AVG 8 fixed

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 8 Jul 2008.

  1. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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  2. Paradigm Shifter

    Paradigm Shifter de nihilo nihil fit

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    I dunno, AVG has been giving me bad experiences of late - like deciding system files are viruses that need to be deleted after an update. After another update, however, they're back to not being viruses.

    Also, I've had AVG tell me that the .exe files of brand new, just-installed-games are infected (and therefore won't let me play the game) when the no-CD version has not been flagged as a virus. Which I found very interesting indeed...
     
  3. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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    That's DRM for you.
     
  4. Arkanrais

    Arkanrais What's a Dremel?

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    NoScript and Adblock plus plugins for firefox have me doing fine. no (apparent) need for any other internet security on my part.
     
  5. sotu1

    sotu1 Ex-Modder

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    beware of your own arrogance my friend. that's the problem most mac users have! i think it's worth keeping a light avg app at least.

    out of interest how does no script and adblock affect your day to day usage of the net? it's something i've been interested in doing
     
  6. sotu1

    sotu1 Ex-Modder

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    sorry, by "avg" i meant "av"
     
  7. Timmy_the_tortoise

    Timmy_the_tortoise International Man of Awesome

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    I have AVG 7.5 on my PC.. and Avast! on my Laptop...

    Avast is a waste of time... It never seems to do anything.. And I can't make it do anything.
     
  8. Paradigm Shifter

    Paradigm Shifter de nihilo nihil fit

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    Aye, that was the only conclusion I could come to as well. DRM = virus. :hehe: Makes me even more adamant that I'm not going to support stuff like that. False positives are a PITA. :(
     
  9. Tris

    Tris What's a Dremel?

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    bit of a turnaround - i read a statement from their head of development (or whatever his job title was) shortly after this issue came out where they said it was totally intentional and planned, which gave the impression they werent gonna do a thing.
     
  10. Bauul

    Bauul Sir Bongaminge

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    LinkScanner operates on my laptop, but not on my PC, and they're identical installations of AVG, very odd.
     
  11. mclean007

    mclean007 Officious Bystander

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    By its very nature, DRM has to employ similar tricks to a virus, such as hiding and encrypting bits of memory (to make it harder to snoop keys or reverse engineer). The heuristic scanners in AV applications look for this sort of behaviour, so it's no wonder they register false positives. Though, depending on your point of view, flagging some DRM (such as rootkits) might be quite appropriate...
     
  12. p3n

    p3n What's a Dremel?

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    I <3 AVG, can't believe we used to give norton £30 a year on our family PC ... long live the free version!
     
  13. impar

    impar Minimodder

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    Greetings!
    Too bad AVG cant clean the infection.
     
  14. Sparrowhawk

    Sparrowhawk Wetsander

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    Personally, as a long time AVG7 user, all I have to say about AVG8 is this. It may very well be the same product, but the team didn't really think out the execution. The eye candy is nice, but looks far and away too "windows-like" for the system resources it takes up. The layout of the program and the useless help files make it seem unprofessional and rushed. But -- it's free and it is good -- so I'm still happy.

    As for Link Scanner, these types of active scanning defenses are well-meaning, but a bad idea in the first place. Sure, there's fake traffic. But it goes deeper. My parent's computer, an older Athlon with 1GB of memory, would choke on a Google search with LS enabled. Turning off LS in the options made AVG scream "You May Not Be Protected!" which for such a minor add-on is not true.

    For the hypothetical, imagine if a paedo site googlebombed it's way to the first page of the search results for some innocuous phrase like "cheesecake." Link Scanner would "scan" the site, most likely red-flag it, but your IP would be in the logs as a visitor. Even if you didn't really visit, it'd be hard to prove innocence.
     
  15. r4tch3t

    r4tch3t hmmmm....

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    Doesn't really affect it at all, faster loading times for some sites. One small thing is some sites need Java for things like drop down selection boxes, but its an easy click to get them working. I find it much better with them on.
     
  16. crazybob

    crazybob Voice of Reason

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    This is the part that bothers me most. I don't feel I need the protection offered by LinkScanner, so its performance penalty, however small, made it undesirable to me. Unfortunately, that means a little angry icon in the system tray all the time. The same thing goes for Anti-Spyware, really. It was a separate program to begin with, and I still see no need for it. A secondary function shouldn't get the same warning message or error as having your virus database out of date.

    If I revert to AVG 7, will I still be able to get definition updates indefinitely? I'd prefer that feature-set, but don't want to get stuck with outdated definitions.
     
  17. Kúsař

    Kúsař regular bit-tech reader

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    Just open AVG, disable 'link scanner' and then go to tools/advanced settings - 'ignore faulty conditions' and check button next to link scanner. There shall be no angry icon in the system tray :)
     
  18. impar

    impar Minimodder

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    Greetings!
    Disable the LinkScanner add-on in Firefox.
     
  19. konsta

    konsta What's a Dremel?

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    I have to say that I've completely lost faith in AVG over recent years. I find that when it does spot a virus, it is usually manifestly incapable of actually removing it. More worrying still was when I switched to Sophos that it found a reasonably significant number of virii that AVG had never noticed!
     
  20. Paradigm Shifter

    Paradigm Shifter de nihilo nihil fit

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    Well, it can't do what I - and I presume other tech savvy people would define as 'clean' - it just deletes the file outright. Which might be a solution... but it is not the right solution.

    ...

    I think I'm gonna install NOD32 this evening, see if I like it.
     
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