ashWebSv.exe acting as server?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1 
      Hi,

        I installed Avast 4.7 home last week along with Comodo Firewall and when         

     I was approving the different programs to allow over the net, I noticed that 

     ashWebSv.exe asked to be allowed to act as a server. I was wondering why.

       The reason I ask is that I see ip addresses that lead to various websites 

    that sell products that relate to server operations. Unfortunately some of them

    are uploading large quantity's of information off of my computer. One of them 

    is Cachenetworks.com which sell a program known as CacheFly. I think it,s 

    some sort of quick download program like Bittorrent. This site uploaded over 

   47,000 kb's of info from my computer and I don't like it. So can Avast work

   without it acting as a server? If it can I would just as soon prefer that it didn't,

   as I don't know what type of information is being taken or what it is being used

  for. 

     I am a stand alone private personnel non business home computer, hooked to

  the web through a dsl modem and working behind an nat.

    I am running XPSP2 (all updates) I mainly use Firefox, but IE6 is primary 

 Browser.

    I like Avast so far.It scans quicker than all of my other security programs.
2

HI
I don’t use comodo, but when I set up sygate the instructions basicaly said no programs needed server rights. Having said that, there are exceptions like limewire, shareza, etc… Webshield (ashwebsv.exe) has been working fine.

HTH

3

ashWebSv.exe is the avast web shield and it is just a dumb proxy that filters http port 80 content. It doesn’t initiate the connection just redirects port 80 traffic through the web shield proxy port 12080, so there is something on your system that is initiating these connections.

You can test it without server rights and see if it works or not.

4

WebShield acts like a local proxy and, maybe, Comodo is reacting to this.
Internet > WebShield > Browser. This is how the http traffic flows. Seems ok.
On contrary, WebShield does not scan outbound connections.

5

I have Comodo + Avast Home and no, it does not ask for server permissions!

Something spooky there.

6 
        Thank you  all for your replies. I'll try to and see if I can cancel the permission

     and see if it stops.
7

Local proxy… it works this way, it asks for this kind of permition.
‘Server’ rights is common in ZoneAlarm usage, in Comodo the permition will be asked by inbound TCP/UDP connection.

8

It does ask. But only once. You have to allow access.