I installed Avast free a few days ago on WIndows 8.1 and I noticed that one of it’s processes, avast! Antivirus Installer, is sending significant amounts of data back to Avast. There should be some data going back but not this large quantity IMHO. I could be wrong about this – happy to be corrected.
In 2 days avast sent 80.4 MB back to avast servers in various countries (UK, US and Germany mainly) while receiving only 4.1 MB. To make matters worse this data was sent unsecured as http.
What is this data that avast is retrieving from my computer and why is it so much? Why is it sent unsecured? This could possibly be a huge security risk for all users unless there is a reasonable explanation for it. Please see attached GlassWire screenshot showing the figures I have quoted.
I don’t think avast free has cybercapture and I only have 2 shields installed (file system shield and web shield) and the rescue disk component nothing else.
I’m concerned that this data upload is by design and not an anomoly. Maybe this is happenning for everyone? If so, what data is it? It seems very insecure to have tens of MBs per day leaving my computer for avast servers and being sent by a unsecured protocol.
Could someone from avast please answer this? If it keeps happening with no explanation I’ll be leaving avast for something else as this is too suspicious.
Again, does it make a difference if you disable one of the shields or CyberCapture ?
It happens with “a explanation”, you just have to find out what it is and as all av’s are doing more and more “in the cloud” you can expect more data traffic.
Thanks Eddy. I have now read about CyberCapture and have disabled it to see what happens tomorrow. Going by the material that I have now read on CyberCapture it seems that this is likely to be the cause, although it would have to be malfunctioning. I haven’t seen any popups indicating that any exe files have been submitted. If it still happens I’ll re-enable it and disable one of the shields and then the other shield if it still happens and try to work out which feature is doing it.
I don’t mind data going to the cloud for processing so long as I know that it is for a good reason. Over 80 MB still seems too much though.
Since disabling CyberCapture there are no more large data uploads. I think that maybe I was over-reacting. Incidentally, the avast program that was doing the upload was instup.exe.
Cybercapture is sending the hash of a file to avast.
If the hash is already known, no further action is taken.
If it is unknown the file is send to avast for analyzes.
Looks like you have (or had) one or more small files that where unknown.
And 84Mb isn’t much data.
