Avast Antivirus - Beware Scam Sites

zenmaster

I use the excellent free Avast Home Edition antivirus program.

I have just noticed that on their site they have posted a warning about a number of scam sites that may show up in a Google search for Avast.

In a preventative measure designed to protect customers, ALWIL Sotware would like to draw attention to the fraudulent selling of their products via several web sites, many advertising via the Google Ad Words program.

The web sites are mostly offering keys to our free Home Edition product, but not in all cases, though charging users as though it were for our paid-for Professional Edition, or, when email "invoices" are received by customers, there is no mention of avast! Instead a list of programs is usually offered that the customer has never heard of, let alone agreed to buy.

They name and shame a number of sites:

In order to protect our customers from such fraud, we have a list (below) of known scams sites that we are aware of. None of the below sites have any connection with ALWIL Software and are not authorized resellers of our products:

* downloadavast.com
* avast-downloads.com
* avast-hq.com
* DownloadAvast.com
* Avast-Downloads.com
* avast-2007.com
* download-avast.com
* download-zone-free.com
* downloadsglobe.com/avast
* freedownloadspace.com
* free-download-center.com
* free-program-download.com
* freedownloadpage.com
* mysoftwaredownloads.com
* IP-MyDowloadSite.com *
* thesoftwaremembersarea.com
* downloadinghome.com *
* Download Assist * (My Downloading)
* Market Bill *
* mywebcs *

The official Avast site is at http://www.avast.com.

The full text of this warning is at http://www.avast.com/eng/fraudulent-sales-of-avast-products.html.

odowdchr

You also have to be careful with drivers and codec sites.

http://www.k-litecodecpack.com/ is one which tries to make you pay money to download something that is free.