combination firefox 14 - free avast 2012

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I got a bad combination, I believe…

firefox 14 is not free of memoryleak problems, avast free 2012 is (it seems) rotating at every letter I type…

is there a way to tell avast certain sites ar safe to load? does it have to scan first anything I type, before giving permission to load (again) the website it’s just loaded? and don’t start surfin before the update has been received. otherwise, everything will be halted…

my internet is not as fast as I hoped for, but with avast it’s terrible. oké every otherfree scanner has it’s pros and cons, but avast shoulb be best, but isn’t until now…

2

Then you should try firefox 15, which was recently released.

Essentially there is no such thing as a safe site, hacked sites are one of the most common methods of infection.

I really have no idea what you mean by “is (it seems) rotating at every letter I type” ?
Avast doesn’t check what you type as you type, If it is rotating one of its shields is actually scanning something (I have no rotation whilst responding to your post), if you have a download in the background, P2P, etc. then avast would be scanning.

3

Could it be, the OP is using google instant predictions? If so, avast might be checking the results that google returns dynamically.

This feature can be turned of: http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35892.

But I doubt that it makes much of a difference in browsing speed.

Best regards,

4

I think the weakest link in browser security are the plugins. Nowadays, you are far more likely to get hit by a third party plugin hack then a browser specific hack (with exception of IE 6,7). If you google “java drive by exploit,” those exploits are being used as drive bay payloads, which means if you have Java and you visit an infected site, you get infected like DavidR mentioned earlier. That goes for Flash, Adobe reader or any other plugins especially if they are outdated.

My advice is either use Chrome which has a default click to play policy for plugins except its own plugins and flash, or assuming you want to still use Firefox disable every plugin except for maybe flash and make sure you have the latest version of both Flash and Firefox. I assume scriptshield helps a bit, but I have no idea how much

" According to CSIS, five products are responsible for 99-percent of all malware infections…The targets - if one is familiar with InfoSec in general - are the usual suspects; Java, Adobe Reader / Acrobat, Adobe Flash, Internet Explorer, and QuickTime."

-http://www.securityweek.com/five-products-responsible-majority-malware-infections