Avira Introduce WebGuard Toolbar on free edition

santer_2

RussJK wrote: »

It's more of an annoying trial version, with reminders each time that it's not a paid for version.

I'm going to stick with the minimalistic Panda free AV, no annoyances

Thank You for letting me know

fiddiwebb

You can uninstall the toolbar from add & remove, the webguard is a good idea but unfortunately the ask toolbar is not and both have to be removed in the free version of Avira.

Whoever thought up this madcap idea over at Avira should have their sphericals removed, now it seems no longer is the free version of Avira totally free as they get paid for every click through using the ask toolbar unless of course you remove it.

parcival

I had this update yesterday and now the Avira umbrella remains shut although it says the guard is active. This is a little disconcerting - am I safe to assume the basic anti virus is working OK.....

GeoffX

There's a thread at Avira's forum which says that the toolbar won't be installed if you decline it three times:
http://forum.antivir.de/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=132567

Anyway, this tooolbar, Avira's renewed inability to automatically update itself, and their promotion of UniBlue's dubious software in the United States have resulted in me uninstalling it and going back to Avast as they seem to have fixed their problem with ATI's Catalyst Control Centre.

fiddiwebb

parcival wrote: »

I had this update yesterday and now the Avira umbrella remains shut although it says the guard is active. This is a little disconcerting - am I safe to assume the basic anti virus is working OK.....

Had the same problem this morning, the guard is working & active but the webguard/toolbar is not because you did not install it or ignored it three times, that's the reason for the closed umbrella.

To get the umbrella to open again you have to install the webguard/toolbar and then uninstall it from add & remove, instruction here........

NOTE: In section 5 of the instructions untick the box for Make Ask.com my browser default search provider

http://www.avira.com/en/support-for-free-faq-detail?faqid=862

Once you have installed webguard/toolbar, restart your computer and remove webgurad/toolbar from add or remove programmes in your control panel.

Dave_C_2

On this win 7 64bit machine I have not had any option to install the toolbar or Webguard on my Avira free.

Next thing I get a message saying something along the lines of Avira searchfree toolbar has been deactivated and Webguard has hence been deactivated. Opening up Avira shows that there is a new webguard bit and sure enough it is deactivated and cannot be activated.
No searchfree toolbar has been installed so I cannot uninstall it.

The solution was to download a fresh copy of Avira free and run it , without uninstalling the older one. On the set-up menu choose Repair

Now no webguard and Avira is back to normal with the umbrella open- for now:)

YMMV Dave

RussJK

Dave_C wrote: »

Now no webguard and Avira is back to normal with the umbrella open- for now:)

Does it automatically update itself out of curiosity? My wife had the netbook for a few days, and it hadn't updated itself since the 26th - so threw in the towel and took Avira off it like the main one.

Dave_C_2

RussJK wrote: »

Does it automatically update itself out of curiosity? My wife had the netbook for a few days, and it hadn't updated itself since the 26th - so threw in the towel and took Avira off it like the main one.

Yes it updates, but the latest one was the 27th, a couple of days ago.

Dave

aliEnRIK

Avira free keeps popping up asking me to INSTALL the toolbar or LEAVE FOR LATER
If that doesnt go, then Avira is

Panda - last I looked it was pretty poor for false positives and not very good as an av. Have they upped their game recently or something?

RussJK

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Panda - last I looked it was pretty poor for false positives and not very good as an av. Have they upped their game recently or something?

I figure that if I'm relying on the antivirus to prevent an infection, then it's too close for comfort anyway. I just wanted something lightweight that would be good for new detections. Panda has been doing well on the latest AV-C, so I thought I'd try it out.

Avira's got better heuristics than most AVs, but I'm really getting surprised by Panda's detections of executables taken from zero-day links. It may be that the samples are old but the links are new, but in the past it when doing this with traditional AVs (Avira, Avast, F-Secure) it would mainly be Malwarebytes Pro making detections.

I struggle to download malware deliberately unless I disable the alternative DNS, HOSTS, etc. I've not run into a single file that Panda/MBAM in combo hasn't detected on scan or upon execution.

I wouldn't recommend Panda as a standalone solution though. It didn't do anything against one of the exploit kits from a working link for example, but I'll have to try some more of those later.