I know there are a few threads talking about why this alert comes up for various sites, but I thought it would be worth discussing the alert and page.
Specifically that alerts typically tell very little other than the object and infection name. They then give you a link to the “communityIQ information portal”. That sounds promising, but its not an information portal, its an upgrade ad. I have no problem with pushing upgrades, they need to make money. But I think that page should at least support the ability to search for the issue in question. It doesn’t even have a link to support or the forums.
I’ll add that in general this my biggest issue with Avast so far is the lack of context it gives for alerts. Every other AV tool I have used in the past always gave me a link to a information page with background on the virus/page for the alert. Avast doesn’t seem to do that, and the user is forced to manually go the forum and start searching including typing in the object description since its not selectable in the alert. In fact, if its not a file I am not sure how I can even find the alert in my history, if its there I don’t think its intuitive.
What would be great is if there was a real information page on the object and that information page had a link to join or create a thread on that alert. That would allow the community to quickly discuss and triage alerts (including false positives). If you like you can just link to that page from the upgrade ad so you can till try and upsell.
communityIQ as a forced ad for upgrade? Why? Where? avast didn’t do that things…
But would they be able to start informative threads about zillions of infections active nowadays… A lot of times, people just say “Oh, get infected…” “Call somebody to clean the mess…”. More technical bla-bla-bla could upset the user even more and compromise the product image: fail, confuse, does not help…
I was saying that I really doubt virus information can be collected and posted in the same speed as they’re generated. avast team will spend a lot of effort to keep informative forum/blog and I personally think that they’re time is better used for protection and not information.
I was trying to say that a lot of people come here in forums just to be cleaned. They don’t want to “understand” the virus completely. The more advanced the information goes, the far the common user wants to be. They would call a technician, a guru… And the gurus does not explain, they just clean the computer
Freedom is the key: the ones who want, could find it.
But I think the major goal will be protection (not information).
I think most people come, clean and go; come, get the minimum information, try to solve and go.
They don’t want to become security experts imho.
For example, I didn’t think the OP was stating anything about Avast “forcing” an upgrade.
The way I read it was that the OP was stating that link in the popup window leads to some kind of page other than what he/she was expecting. I’m afraid I don’t know to what page that link leads. If somebody could provide an address, it might help.
Yes, I am saying the page that is billed as a “community” info portal" is really just an upgrade ad with no information or community on it and no links to information or community.
Agree that the Community portal is “too much” ad of the paid versions.
About the info, I feel the same as before. Symantec is giving resources to build that pages (it’s paid). MSE is for free and gives less info. I think better is protection than too much technical info.
I guess the “portal” part of the “avast! Community Info Portal” page is down at the very bottom – “Website Homepage” or “Contacts” and then ones up at the very top “About Us” or “Region Selector” and in between is a lot of … well, infomercial. In fact, the “Graphs” didn’t load properly when I clicked on it, but might just be my system.
Anyway, I got it now.
So the idea of a page just showing the facts on a given threat is not such a viable idea, is the thinking, yes? Just Google it? Or some other search engine? There isn’t a page on the forum that only lists the threat descriptions, right? That probably would be an excessive amount of work, right? But somebody keeps such a list, so I guess it might be fair to say it isn’t necessary to repeat work already done elsewhere. That is until that information is no longer free.
I am leaning toward this being the key point here. While Tech is making perfectly good sense (By the way, Tech, cool picture over in the blog.), it also does not seem to be the “industry standard” in that many, if not ‘most’ companies engaged in such things that require progressive program writing/coding seem to feel the information releases with a given program written and released is the norm and not the exception, regardless of how many customers actually utilize the information. I think it is the few that do make the effort to learn and keep up with updates, etc. that are the ones that will be having the most impact on company reputation as they will be the most likely to post their opinions and feedback on the Net.
reesd has already noted that ‘most’ other malware fighters are providing information pages and I think about Microsoft that always provides details on any update, no matter how light and seemingly insignificant the update. True, there is more money coming in to be able to spend on such work, but how about other freeware providers – do they also supply such information as noted by reesd?
BUT I sure hope it doesn’t sound like I’m advocating one position or another – I’m not at all. I do think, though, there’s no harm in discussing the issue. I suspect some discussions that produce ideas on this board produce slight, maybe more than slight, changes in the Avast boardroom/product. That’s got to be good and so, by extension, discussion is good.
I do, though, agree with some posts above that maybe that page to which one is sent is a little more than misleading and that might not be so good for the company image, if I may be so bold as to opine.
I too agree with tech, Avast team should be spending time protecting computers rather than providing information, but also it would be nice to see them having an online database of viruses and once something gets detected the users have the option to go visit the site and get more information about it (for the users who want to know more about it) - just like Nortan or MSE, hopefully in the future they will do this - this is my preference as I would like to know more about what infected my computer… I’m not sure how hard / expensive it is to do/maintain such a database, but I was just saying its nice to see something like that
Sadly the community info portal seems to be a bit outdated and users dont get to see what they expect to see… Hope they change all this in he future ;D
Like Steven said they should atleast add a link to the support forums, and they have to change the name if they are going to continue showing that link…
A quick look shows that at the very least AVG, Panda, bitdefender, kapersky, and avira all do. To be honest, its hard to find one that doesn’t.
Of course, all those options may mean that Avira may not need to. What I do think they should provide is a little more info on why they blocked an object (3rd party blacklist?) and a forum search to discuss it.
I agree including the users time, hence my second point. Some more info about the general type of blocking, the source that put the object on the bad list (blacklists for HTTP), and link to searching the forum would all be very helpful and not need to be updated with every definitions change.
