Is Avast beginning to annoy anyone else?

Shrimply

bsod wrote: »

popups and sounds have been there for more than a decade.

Yes, my point is the pop-ups are now more frequent and some of them are 4X larger than they used to be. Say what you want, there is no excuse for this.

as i said, corporate emails from multinationals and government do similar. sent from my ipad/htc/spectrum serves no purpose to the recipient, scanned for viruses is potentially re-assuring that the email is safe.

To me, if an organisation feels the need to have a message saying the email is clean it raises questions as to why it anything originating from themselves would not be virus free. I get a lot of emails from academics at various institutions, obviously all these emails are scanned and checked. None of them feel the need to add anything onto the bottom because it just looks unprofessional.

And the point, again, is it did it without asking first.

as you're not paying for it, and have no input into the design spec, you can't really moan about it doing things you don't want, just turn it off - a few seconds of clicking should get it to your liking.

all the settings are in one place, settings, general and active protection - reputation services, sounds, popups, alerts. browser plugins can be disabled in the browser

I'd like to see your argument as to the benefit of the DomainRep, and even better, since it's so easy to turn things off, explain how I disable it.

https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=163221.0

It's a pointless feature, which has been implemented for no other reason than to get their stats up. It affects small businesses and sites and has no logic to it. Avast Users don't visit this site often... lets assume its dangerous. Yeah right.

spud17

Bit OT.
I do like some of the little messages at the bottom of emails.

It means the Freecycle replies that have 'Sent from my iThing' don't get considered.

pendragon_arther

bod1467 wrote: »

Are you sure it's not just a hidden folder? Check Folder & Search Options in Explorer, the View tab and select Show hidden files, folders and drives.

My bad. I forgot to show hidden folders again after reinstalling Vista. Thanks.

kwikbreaks

When I saw this thread I realised it was. Nags most days and updates that require a reboot when I suspect that the update was more about offering the paid-for option than updating.

I've binned it and resurrected defender.

bsod

Did you check any antivirus tests before making that leap into the unknown, the second post in this thread shows how to make it silent, none of the things you complain of happen on this machine

kwikbreaks

I've been using Windows based computers since 3.1 and the only virus I have ever encountered was when I once put a Windows machine in the DMZ with no software firewall to see how long it would last. It was around half an hour with a buffer overrun exploit that it turned out was known to MS for over a year but which they hadn't included the patch in the maintenance cycle. I don't recall if it had AV or not but I doubt it would matter either way. The biggest threat as was said above is stupidity.

Shrimply

bsod wrote: »

Did you check any antivirus tests before making that leap into the unknown, the second post in this thread shows how to make it silent, none of the things you complain of happen on this machine

You, seem to be missing the point on purpose. Gaming mode means you don't know if Avast has detected anything dangerous, or blocked web pages, or anything. People are not upset by the useful pop-ups, and they want them. It's the frequent advertising using large pop-ups that are the problem.

You seem to be the sole defender here, compare that to if I'd posted this 2 or 3 years ago and I can't see how you can argue that they are not heading down the wrong road.

The way I see it is that the vast majority of people that choose a free anti-virus are those tech savvy enough to know that it will do a better or equally good job as paid for software. And that it will do exactly the same job as the paid for version. They are not interested in protection gimmicks included in paid for software because they know they aren't needed. So these people, if they choose to switch to a paid version, will do so through loyalty to a good product that they have used for some time along with the benefit of losing pop-ups and maybe a few other small benefits. But they are also the people who are least likely to get an infected machine, and will happily spend sometime finding another product to use instead. So nagging them with advertising is more likely to annoy them and thus lose them as users than it is to gain paying customers.

Having a look through some comparisons, Bitdefender definitely seems to hold it's own in tests. I can use F-Secure full version for free, I'd never have considered it in the past, but now...

bsod

The biggest threat is ignorance. If you've been around since 3.1 you should know that you don't have to do anything stupid to get infected.

and shrimply, I couldn't care less what you use.

Shrimply

bsod wrote: »

and shrimply, I couldn't care less what you use.

There is really no need to be rude. This is a place for discussion and debate and considering others views and opinions. Not shooting down other peoples views without any real justification. And when you can take time to consider what you are posting there is no excuse for being generally impolite.

It's my thread and it was posted as a light hearted rant which for some reason, which I can't quite understand, you seem to have taken quite personally. I can never understand people who refuse to admit something has flaws. Everything has flaws that can't be defended.

Avast is not chart topping in terms of it's performance, there are alternatives which are equally good. You keep referring to checking comparison charts. I haven't found any which say Avast is in every way superior to all others, where are they?

bsod

we are clearly on a different planet if you thought that was rude, It was a response to your inference that I'm some kind of solitary evangelist, it was short because there is no point dragging out the discussion any further.

I couldn't care less what anyone uses, or how they configure their antivirus - but if people are uninstalling all antivirus completely and relying on malware/spyware scanners or unknowingly switching to an inferior product, all because of some design aspect they don't like, a popup or webrep or anything else, then they should investigate how to turn the things off before jumping ship, live with it, or switch to something else with a similar or better detection rate.

free software follows a similar pattern, it starts off free, then they bundle toolbars or chrome or yahoo, or nasty stuff, or worse - spy on you, sell your browsing habits, monitor your speech, monitor your typing, read your emails, take your photo, compared to some of the stuff going on atm and considering the way it's heading, a popup advert every now and again is tame - but you are getting it for nowt, so what is there to complain about. If you find a clean, nag free, perfect product, don't expect it to stay that way forever.

I don't like popups either, which is why they are off, 4 clicks and you can let avast carry on it's work silently whilst you get on with yours. Your other moans don't trouble me in the slightest

I am not taking anything personally, I'm just responding to you, and others, as happens in discussions

nowhere have I said it's the best, the fastest or doesn't have flaws, all of those are subjective, depend on test methodology, and change from time to time. I view protection from dodgy websites a useful feature, you found it's implementation annoying, once.. I don't view adding a scanned with xxxx antivirus to emails as a flaw or unprofessional, nor do many professional organisations who do similar, you do. It's not a refusal to admit flaws, it's a different viewpoint. I noticed it a couple of years ago, and have never once given it any thought until now.

http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php?chart=chart2&year=2015&month=8&sort=0&zoom=2

defender doesn't show up well in that chart, it's 92.8 %



"Also interesting is the performance of Windows Defender. It significantly slows down surfing, downloading and copying. That is why the testers were only able to award 3 out of 6 possible points" "Apart from Windows Defender, none of the products tested delivered abysmal results"


now, I will leave you alone to make your choice, so don't expect any further response