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General discussionAntivirus (incl. paid) recommendations - since Avast is becoming a piece of malware(100 posts)(100 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 12, 2018
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HunchBluntley: I actually went with Avast, and I have to say, I haven't had many of the problems you have,..
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ZFR: First of all, thank you very much for your post. If what you say is true then it sucks; BitDefender is actually doing exactly what I don't want my AV to do...

Regarding Avast, go to settings and see if "Enable Avast email signature" is checked. If it is, Avast adds a signature to any email you send. Probably not if you use webmail, but it will happen if you use Thunderbird, Outlook or some email client.
And the problem is, even if you uncheck this, it has the habit of turning itself back on when Avast updates. This is not even borderline malware; as I said attempting to spread yourself through a user's emails without his knowledge is malware pure and simple.
I have gone through Avast settings two or three times since I've switched to it, and I made sure that one was disabled (it was off by default, and it's never enabled itself).
As I've said, though, I've only been using it for around five months. Meaning I don't know what kind of horseshit existing users of older versions might have had to deal with when updating (much like my ordeal when updating Bitdefender Free).
Posted January 12, 2018
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HunchBluntley: Less than two weeks later, I found that I was locked out of accessing (or even seeing) hidden system files in Windows File Explorer. In an administrator login. (I think there were some other File Explorer settings that had changed and which I couldn't change back, too, but the hidden files one was the big one.) After a bit of fruitless faffing about on Google, I started to suspect what the problem might be. On a whim, I decided to uninstall Bitdefender and see if that helped. (This might have been after I experimented with killing its various system processes as a test; I no longer recall.) Lo and behold, my Windows settings were back to normal (i.e., accessible) after that. (Bear in mind, there were no options to take it out of "Please force me to wear my visored motorcycle helmet while I'm eating with my plastic safety spork, in case I miss my mouth and jam it into my eye" mode.)
OK, after reading this and a bit more googling, I think I'll try Kaspersky first instead of BitDefender.

I just don't want silent removals and the "we know better what's good for you...". I don't mind false positive, but it should be like:
AV: Threat Detected.
User: Please ignore this file.
AV: OK.
Posted January 12, 2018
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ZFR: OK, after reading this and a bit more googling, I think I'll try Kaspersky first instead of BitDefender.

I just don't want silent removals and the "we know better what's good for you...". I don't mind false positive, but it should be like:
AV: Threat Detected.
User: Please ignore this file.
AV: OK.
Good luck!
Posted January 12, 2018
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Lexor: Can I ask you a few questions about these components you have installed?
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HunchBluntley: It appears you already have, so I'll say, "Sure!" =)
Sorry about that... ^^

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Lexor: Rescue Disk: Is there any advantage to have it installed on the hard drive? I'm asking about this because If PC gets some "infection" then using Rescue Disk menu option at that time and creating a disk to boot PC up makes a little sense to me.
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HunchBluntley: Heh, I've never even made use of this one. (That's why I put "I guess" after that one in my previous post.)
That looks to me like a "dead feature". :D I think it would be much better to get an option to create Rescue Disk directly from Avast installator file than to install Rescue Disk on HDD to create that later....

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Lexor: Security browser extension: Is there anything special about it? Is it "better" than "custom security setup" like Adblock / NoScript?
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HunchBluntley: I actually use it alongside both of those. :P I'm not sure if it actually provides anything that they don't, but it doesn't seem to have any additional performance impact on Firefox, and my current list of extensions is pretty light anyway (literally just those three, actually), so I figure, "why not?"
That's quite opposite thinking to mine - I prefer to know what app is doing before installation. If it does "nothing new" then "why should I?" ;)

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Lexor: Game Mode: Do you know if Game Mode is a new name for Silent Mode from old Avast versions? I've read that Game Mode improves the performance of PC while gaming by adjusting system settings and disabling unnecessary apps from running in the background - I wonder how does Game Mode recognize that some application is unnecessary and can be disabled? What does this "disable" mean? Does Game Mode kill this process?
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HunchBluntley: No idea how it works, and I haven't really noticed any difference (not saying there isn't one, just saying that I'm rather unobservant about these things unless everything comes to a grinding halt). But yeah, it supposedly pauses background system updates and such while a game is running, and makes sure the game is prioritized with regards to system resources. It doesn't close any active programs/apps or anything too intrusive like that, though.
I also have no idea what (if any) different names that feature might have had before, given that I've only been using Avast for something like five months.

EDIT: It appears there is still a "Silent Mode" setting, where "No Avast messages/pop-ups/alerts will be displayed." But that's all it is.
Hmmm... at least it does not "kill". :D And it's good to know that "Silent Mode" is still here - I think it will be enough for me. I can take care of other "unnecessary apps" by myself. ;)
Posted January 12, 2018
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HunchBluntley: It appears you already have, so I'll say, "Sure!" =)
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Lexor: Sorry about that... ^^
Just joking, don't worry about it.

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HunchBluntley: I actually use it alongside both of those. :P I'm not sure if it actually provides anything that they don't, but it doesn't seem to have any additional performance impact on Firefox, and my current list of extensions is pretty light anyway (literally just those three, actually), so I figure, "why not?"
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Lexor: That's quite opposite thinking to mine - I prefer to know what app is doing before installation. If it does "nothing new" then "why should I?" ;)
Component description from within the Avast settings: "Scans the websites you're about to visit for reputation and authenticity, blocks annoying ads, and puts you in a super-safe mode when it's time for online banking. All around useful, if we do say so ourselves." The ad blocking is by itself redundant, given my other extensions, but clicking the extension's toolbar button gives an at-a-glance breakdown (by category) of how many social network feelers, ad trackers, and web analytics...uh...analyzers are present on the current page, which is a nice bonus.
Again, I don't know what it's actually doing (or how well it's doing it). But what they claim it's doing is pretty useful.
Posted January 12, 2018
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HunchBluntley: Until late summer last year.
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ZFR: It seems to become a habit. All AVs are turning to silent removal so users "don't worry" about this stuff.
That's the issue our clients and myself had a few years ago with AVG with a broken update and its not telling its users about the issue.

It's also why we stress the occasional manual updating of both the program and the sig files as well as a full manual scan.
Posted January 12, 2018
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HunchBluntley: Just joking, don't worry about it.
<3

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HunchBluntley: Component description from within the Avast settings: "Scans the websites you're about to visit for reputation and authenticity, blocks annoying ads, and puts you in a super-safe mode when it's time for online banking. All around useful, if we do say so ourselves." The ad blocking is by itself redundant, given my other extensions (...)
"Scans (...) for reputation and authenticity" - What are your Avast privacy options? I think it's not possible to get "site reputations" when you opted-out and prefered not to share your data with Avast.

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HunchBluntley: (...) clicking the extension's toolbar button gives an at-a-glance breakdown (by category) of how many social network feelers, ad trackers, and web analytics...uh...analyzers are present on the current page, which is a nice bonus.
Haha, yes, that's maybe "fun to watch" how many of them are "here" but all these "social network feelers, ad trackers, and web analytics...uh...analyzers" already do not work "properly" with my other two addons - Beef Taco and BetterPrivacy. ;) And I know exactly what these two are doing. :D
Post edited January 12, 2018 by Lexor
Posted January 12, 2018
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Lexor: Haha, yes, that's maybe "fun to watch" how many of them are "here" but all these "social network feelers, ad trackers, and web analytics...uh...analyzers" already do not work "properly" with my other two addons - Beef Taco and BetterPrivacy. ;) And I know exactly what these two are doing. :D
Ghostery is also quite neat
Posted January 12, 2018
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drmike: It's also why we stress the occasional manual updating of both the program and the sig files as well as a full manual scan.
Yes, it is a very good advice for everyone. Good example are any display drivers - they are (rather) not so complicated as AV software but still need 3rd-party uninstaler for "proper" re-installation. I think such case is very common and after some cycle of auto-installations it's good to do a proper manual one.

Maybe that was the main source of problems for OP?

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amok: Ghostery is also quite neat
It *was*. ;)
Post edited January 12, 2018 by Lexor
Posted January 12, 2018
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HunchBluntley: Component description from within the Avast settings: "Scans the websites you're about to visit for reputation and authenticity, blocks annoying ads, and puts you in a super-safe mode when it's time for online banking. All around useful, if we do say so ourselves." The ad blocking is by itself redundant, given my other extensions (...)
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Lexor: "Scans (...) for reputation and authenticity" - What are your Avast privacy options? I think it's not possible to get "site reputations" when you opted-out and prefered not to share your data with Avast.
I'm not sure I understand your reasoning. I'm pretty sure it means reputation based (at least in part) on other Avast users' ratngs of the site (users of that extension can, from its toolbar button menu, give the site a thumbs-up or -down based on their "experience with the site"). Not sure if there's anything more to it than that, and I rarely even pay attention to that feature. But refusing to share your own data with Avast, or to participate in the "Avast community" (those are the two options listed under privacy -- don't remember whether either one is on by default or not, but I've got them both turned off) shouldn't in any way prevent Avast from sharing their own, or their community's, site reputation ratings with any individual user. Choosing not to share data means you don't send yours to them, not that they don't send theirs to you. :P
Posted January 12, 2018
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HunchBluntley: Choosing not to share data means you don't send yours to them, not that they don't send theirs to you. :P
No, it does not work that way - getting data from community is considered as your reward for sharing yours. :)
If you opted out from sharing you also won't get any data from community.
Posted January 12, 2018
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HunchBluntley: Choosing not to share data means you don't send yours to them, not that they don't send theirs to you. :P
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Lexor: No, it does not work that way - getting data from community is considered as your reward for sharing yours. :)
If you opted out from sharing you also won't get any data from community.
Hmm. Looking at the description of the "Participate in the Avast community" option, it seems you might be right in this case.
Normally, though, the "sharing" in "data sharing" is a euphemism, as most other services I'm familiar work basically the same whether you directly share your data with them or not (apart from maybe things like personalized ads and search results, obviously).

But assuming Avast's "community" data is, in this case, mostly just providing the site's safety rating in that extension, I don't really care about that anyway, so I guess I'll muddle along somehow without it. =P
Posted January 12, 2018
I've never used anything seriously after the days of Windows 98 and Spybot S&D.

These days, it's because I use Linux so nyeh. (But even then, Clam isn't really that hard to use.)

But in Windows 10, what more do you need? The definitions of Defender update daily, the whole shebang is integrated into the system, and it does background timer scanning pretty dang good.
Posted January 13, 2018
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ZFR: OK, after reading this and a bit more googling, I think I'll try Kaspersky first instead of BitDefender.

I just don't want silent removals and the "we know better what's good for you...". I don't mind false positive, but it should be like:
AV: Threat Detected.
User: Please ignore this file.
AV: OK.
Good choice. I don't use bitdefender for a couple of reasons, the main one being that it stops reduces downloads or updates to 0 bytes for whatever reason. Also it uses process calls that are being fixed with the meltdown/spectre updates, so you'd get bluescreens if they haven't reprogrammed the entire thing by now.

Kaspersky Free has been exactly what I expected from it. The only annoying thing was the certificate checking. Some sites I use frequently apparently don't updated ones, so instead of notifying them it just gives a pop up every 30m that you have to UAC click out of. I disabled that functionality though. :)
Posted January 13, 2018
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HunchBluntley: Less than two weeks later, I found that I was locked out of accessing (or even seeing) hidden system files in Windows File Explorer. In an administrator login. (I think there were some other File Explorer settings that had changed and which I couldn't change back, too, but the hidden files one was the big one.) After a bit of fruitless faffing about on Google, I started to suspect what the problem might be. On a whim, I decided to uninstall Bitdefender and see if that helped. (This might have been after I experimented with killing its various system processes as a test; I no longer recall.) Lo and behold, my Windows settings were back to normal (i.e., accessible) after that. (Bear in mind, there were no options to take it out of "Please force me to wear my visored motorcycle helmet while I'm eating with my plastic safety spork, in case I miss my mouth and jam it into my eye" mode.)
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ZFR: OK, after reading this and a bit more googling, I think I'll try Kaspersky first instead of BitDefender.

I just don't want silent removals and the "we know better what's good for you...". I don't mind false positive, but it should be like:
AV: Threat Detected.
User: Please ignore this file.
AV: OK.
if you are just trying, then i still recommend looking into Webroot also. it has a months free test
Pages:
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4
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6
7
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionAntivirus (incl. paid) recommendations - since Avast is becoming a piece of malware(100 posts)(100 posts)
(100 posts)