Is it me or do other people have the same issue. I have now had about 6 reoccurences of the same virus “MS virus removal tool”. Each time avast has failed to detect it and it’s basically locked out Avast and System Restore. The first time, I phone the Iyogi people and paid £100 for a subscription to their service so they could remove the virus and reinstall Avast. Guess what, it didn’t cure the problem. Anti-malware bytes didn’t sure it either. In the end I had to do a complete reinstall of my PC. Then, as you can imagine, it was no end of hassle rebuilding everything. 6 times this has now happened from different, non-offensive, legal sites.
I have also, today got another virus which Avast hasn’t detected from a website that I’ve always used to download my Google Unpersonalised utility from and until now has always been fine.
What am I paying Avast for. All it’s doing is blocking pop ups and finding spam emails. It’s sure as heck not stopping viruses. And, it’s hugely frustrating ringing up a non Avast support team whose sole interest seems to be to uninstall and resintall something to see if it works or to lecture me on why certain files are doing certain things and how it’s not an Avast problem (which is rubbish). Don’t sell something as Internet Security when it’s clearly not doing the job.
Yes I know viruses change all the time and it’s a tough job keeping up but that’s your job. Don’t do it if you can’t stay a step ahead.
So anyway, my point was Avast doesn’t pick up this virus and hasn’t the last 6 times and it’s also now missed this one from what used to be www.yoast.com. This time the virus says it’s an Adobe Flash update and even when I cancelled it thinking it was a virus it still infiltrated my PC. Another rebuild, more data lost.
Anyone got a palatable answer other than “it’s tough to keep up” or “don’t click on anything suspiscous”.
I have to agree with you on this. My work laptop has another AV, does not catch everything, my server hosting company uses another, and it does not catch everything. None of the AV Programs can prevent it 100% of the time. I also run MWB, and Spybot, and was still infected. The AV and MalWare folks will always be playing catchup as the code constantly changes, and new threats are released.
I’m not expecting perfection but none out of six is a pretty crap result. It didn’t even manage to stop an email with a virus attached to it from crashing my outlook. I had to manually change settings in outlook to make it only download the headers then delete the email through outlook directly on the server (not even through Avast).
What’s even more annoying is that Avast popped up an alert to tell me of the virus, moved it to the chest and yet the virus still took hold.
As I said perfection is not what I’m after, just a little better odds at catching more viruses than it’s letting through.
Plus I can’t even find anything on here about this virus and yet there is bags of stuff on the internet about it!
Well, 0-6 is pretty bad, if that is accurate and you are not just inflating numbers. No offense but that seems to be the most popular angry customer strategy an the web.
Show me an AV that can stop these rogues. This isn’t Avast! fail, imo, but industry fail. Because these are not…technically a virus. And almost all require you to click on something to accept their installation.
Since these rogues update often, sometimes every copy generates a new signature, you have to pretty much assume any major vendors will not have the signatures till it is too late for real-time defense. The best defense I have found against these is in-browser security with Firefox’s NoScript extention. Over 15 months, 3 rogue attacks in three months. Then after using NoScript, 0 attacks in the next 12 months.
hmmmm.....depends how you look at it.....avast did score 99.8 at Shadow server today....that is 49.799 samples detected
Is it me or do other people have the same issue. I have now had about 6 reoccurences of the same virus "MS virus removal tool". Each time avast has failed to detect it and it's basically locked out Avast and System Restore. The first time, I phone the Iyogi people and paid £100 for a subscription to their service so they could remove the virus and reinstall Avast. Guess what, it didn't cure the problem.
well next time you are infected, come here and Essexboy will clean your computer for free
you can also go to Malwarebytes forum or Geeks to Go forum for free malware removal
What’s this no script thingy you’re on about then, maybe that’s my best option.
As for the results I stated, they are genuine, 0 out of 6 which I still claim is terrible. As for the signature changing everytime, if that’s the case and that’s the way viruses are going, what’s the point in Avast other than a “once your systems infected come get our virus cleaner”. I don’t want to be harsh as I’ve always liked Avast. I used to use CA Antivirus, but when I bought the whole package and installed it, my pc slowed by like 100 times and it wouldn’t let me open any web pages other than the home page.
Anyway, I know Avast is probably doing it’s best, I’m just not convinced of the point of an Anti-virus when it catches less than it lets through.
Thanks Pondus, much appreciated but I don’t want to have to bother anyone (hence the reason I bought the antivirus). Normally by the time I have to bother someone the damage is done and I’m having to do a rebuild. I’ll bear it in mind though. Next time it happens I’ll give you a shout and maybe you’ll spot something that I’m missing and it’s all just operator error as they say
As for the 99.8 result, that makes no different to me. They are only as good as the next virus that gets through. Harsh maybe but true.
I hate ranting, honestly I do, I just want it to do what it says in the marketing literature.
But if you choose to install it, have a little bit of free time to get to know how it works. It isn’t a ‘smart’ defense, it is an ‘educational’ one, for lack of a better explanation. It was pretty intrusive at first for me, but the longer you have it, the more it fades to the background, I scarcely notice I have it anymore till I go to a site I never visit.
You can also change some advanced setting with Avast! to better your protection. Avast!'s default represent a balance of protection vs. performance, but I turned a couple of things up without noticing any difference, like maxing the WebShields heuristics and also turning on its PuP detection.
Well, I’ve just got off the phone to a technical support specialist from Iyogi. I have to say, from a customer service point of view, I can’t fault them, they are fantastic. It was a shame in some ways that I’d already had to rebuild my pc because it would have been nice to let the guy show off his technical skills and fix my pc. Alas, he gave it a once over to check it was clean and safe as it could be and it’s a green light, good to go.
I have yet to have my faith restored in Avast, what good is it, if it can’t out perform the crooks and saboteurs! Iyogi actually sounds like a better proposition than Avast in many ways. At least if I contract a virus I am confident Iyogi can sort it (if I can remember my account details that is).
Anyway, pc is back to normal, lost a few bits in the process. Well done Iyogi, tut tut Avast!