Suddenly everybody in our homes’ copy of avast! keeps saying that we are violating the licence by using it in a business and wants money?!
I’m guessing some virus has gotten onto our network somehow? How do I get rid? thx
how many computers on the network ?
Read reply #6 from Vlk http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=83260.msg678794#msg678794
Not sure man! There’s between 12 and 15 people living here at any one time (5 of us who bought the house and friends etc.) I recommended avast! to my friends because I’ve used it for so long (more than 10 years) and suddenly this!
With that many, its probably perfectly legit. Read through the link Pondus posted. Theres also a screenshot of the message window posted in there also, it will probably match what you saw.
You can’t blame avast for trying to protect their revenue stream against businesses using the free version.
Unfortunately some avast free users, if using a domain network to share connections, etc. and have large numbers of systems attached look like a small business network. The limit has been raised to 5 before this pop-up would be used, on the occasions that it is deployed (which I don’t think is a permanent thing but a periodic one).
The raising this number to 5 computers on the network, should cater for the majority of homes, unfortunately even that number wouldn’t cater for extreme cases like yours. You can just dismiss the pop-up if you aren’t using the systems for business purposes.
See extract:
and
What no one has mentioned is that there are numerous family run businesses using a small network of four or less computers.
In fact I used to work a fella who ran a family owned and run business out his home. He used four computers and grossed over $250,000 a year and this was ten years ago.
So IMO Avast is being very lenient with the five requirement.
I have three computers and had bought three pro license at different times. So today since they will be ending soon I decided to just go ahead a buy a license for 5 pc’s at once. The two extra are for computers I plan to buy in the near future. I am just a home user, I just like messing around with different computers. When I inserted the license into avast a pop up came up but not exactly as has been described here, it just had two options for me to mark one of, if I was installing license for pro or business version, at least something like that. I selected pro and everything went fine and no more pop up since. Is this the same or is this a different one, anything to worry about?
That is what I can’t understand about such businesses, why try to rip off a company (another business) by using the free version against the terms of the license. They can legitimately claim the cost of the software as a business expense.
This is also going to reduce their tax bill, so I know who I would rather pay, avast! software or the taxman, no contest. Unless of course they are avoiding tax as well, in which case I hope they have their collar felt.
Probably for the same reason many companies won’t pay their employees a living wage. :
As I recall he used Norton and paid for it. He also paid me pretty well
But I hear ya regarding private businesses small and even medium size not paying very well. I also worked for a number of private hi-tech manufacturers with annual revenues between $25 and $50 million and they definitely paid below average. However, once you had been there five years or so your chances of getting laid off because of a bad economy were almost non-existent.
The avast! free for home use is in specific license violation if you use your computer for a home business. That is a commercial use. I have personally witnessed mass piracy of our free product in business. I have knowledge of computer vendors loading avast! free in corporate environments. I have had customers say to me “your free product is too good, you just lost a customer” It’s the same as walking into Walmart and stealing a DVD. It seems that because it is online, it is OK to steal.
In the avast! 4 Free, the network shield was missing. This made absolutly no difference at all to home users. I extensively tested the avast! free for home in 2003 in a network environment. It kept my PC as clean as avast! Pro did.
I have previously made a request to AVAST Software executives to remove the network shield in the current version of avast! Free for home. Their is not enough differentiation between the Free and Pro products. To the home users, this will make absolutly no difference in protecting your systems! THIS NEEDS to happen!
To the real legitimate avast! Free for Home users. If you are in compliance, then you have nothing to worry about. The 5 count default (to get the email notification) is a calculated number where the huge majority of home users are less than 5. I believe that more than 90% of those recieving the email will be in license violation. Don’t blame AVAST, just understand that are being ripped blind!
To the Business illegitimate users of avast! Free for Home, how do you feel when somebody steals from you? Are you a pirater. The answer is yes. And Microsoft knows it too. Do the right thing and pay for what you use. The product is now so inexpensive, anybody can afford it! I will give you an additional 30% discount for DOING the RIGHT thing!
To AVAST Software, please remove the network shield from the free product (again). It will absolutly make no difference to the home users protection.
Sincerely, J.R. Guthrie
I’m not completely sure what you are talking about, as the Network Shield has always been in the Free version, but it’s not going to happen.
Quite a lot of malware is blocked by the Network Shield exclusively (and if you actually mean the Script Shield, it’s going to become an important part of the protection soon as well), so removing those would affect the protection significantly.
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As Igor said, the network shield has always been a part of avast Home 4.x and later avast free versions.
I can’t understand your stunning comment “To the home users, this will make absolutly no difference in protecting your systems!”
What that shows is your lack of knowledge of exactly what the Network Shield does. Even back in the 4.x Home days it provided protection against exploits, DCOM, LSASS and worms on commonly used/exploited ports. So that does provide protection for home users also as we still see instances of this network shield intercepting these DCOM, LSASS exploits in the viruses and worms forum.
Since the inclusion of the malicious sites list into the virus definitions, which is used to specifically by the network shield, this also provides great protection for Home, non-commercial users. Again take a foray into the viruses and worms forum and look for all of the URL:MAL detections, were the network shield is blocking access to malicious sites. In many cases, this particular one is a very good indication that there is undetected/hidden malware on the users system.
So I suggest you do your homework (excuse the pun) before making the unbelievable statement “To the home users, this will make absolutly no difference in protecting your systems!”
Wrong.
Completely wrong.
Absolutely wrong. Moving free features to the paid version will only make people upset and reduce the overall protection. We haven’t seen this in ten years. Hope nobody listen your claims.
I was was testing avast! 4 free - this is back in 2003 / 2004. When avast! would block an infected email in outlook, all the other machines on the network would popup and block the same infection. So, no infection spread at all. But the message was there. This is the function I am discussing. Maybe my terminology of the “network shield” is incorrect. My experience with the Free product was very short lived. I am in the SMB market place. We pay for what we use. I just absolutely don’t believe in Piracy!
- Don’t you think that this test is quite outdated by now…??
- Well, as you are a reseller, you should also know about the free version, imo.
- +1