Avast - 2015 - Clarify Your Update Definitions

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

You’ve obviously made changes to the update definitions and there are obviously a lot of people confused about what exactly it is supposed to be doing which is evident as quite a few threads have been posted on this topic.

As I’m sitting here on 10/31, I went in to check to make sure it’s updating (everything is set on auto) and my definition signature is at 141029-1 (probably about the last time I clicked update manually)… however, the latest update received is 2 minutes ago. I click to update and it updates to 141031-1.

What is this supposed to mean??? It makes zero sense…

How can my signature be from two days ago, but I just received updates? Am I just receiving updates from two days ago?

Now keep in mind I didn’t just sign in after not being online for a while… I’ve been online pretty consistently in the last two days so everything should be completely up to date, but after hitting update a large download occurs and updates me with two days worth of updates?

I don’t think you have all the bugs worked out of this and it necessitates some clear insight or rethought of how you think this should work.

Please let us all know

Also, please put a hover back in the system tray icon to identify either the signature update or at the very least the last date and time this was updated as it is really a pain to open and close the program in order to check if this thing is even updating. “You are protected” really doesn’t tell me anything.

2

That’s related to stream updates.

3

There a two types of updates when it comes to detection.
First one is (as Asyn said) the streaming updates.
Second one is the VPS update.

The VPS number is made up out of the date and a extra number.
Example:
20140506-0 is a update released on 2014(=year), 05(=month), 06(=day)
The -0 means it is the first update on that day.
If there is another update on that day it would be
20140506-1 (etc. etc.)

avast is set by default to check for vps updates every 4(?) hours.
That means that it can look as if you received a update one day later then the release dat.
Another thing to keep in mind are the time zones. (there are 25)
The “date number” of a vps is based on the time in Tjechië.
So if you live in another time zone it also can look like you received the vps update a day later.

I hope this info is helping you.