In my opinion i think that the default actions are the worst ever. Cause, they make the cleaning or removing everything that Avast finds automatically. That’s Bad, really bad.
Just think about the false positives.
It should be ASK, every time. Then the user should have the option to change that to other options, but by default it should be ASK. As it where in verson 4.8.
I’m really thinking of changing Anti-virus just because of this. I really don’t know what else Avast does without asking.
It seems like you found the cons of automated actions, on the otherhand, the pros would be to unknowing users who tend to always select “No action” when asked by an antivirus.
You may configure yours by selecting the shield > Expert Settings > Action
Many user were screaming the house down asking for automated actions, personally I’m all for personal decision making. Unfortunately there are many people that aren’t in a position to make a decision on what action to take and this is why the auto actions were brought in and the safest option chosen in that case, normally send to chest, where you have some choices left to you.
They weren’t so blind as not to give the experienced user the option of changing this in the Expert Settings, so avast is still one of the most configurable AVs out there.
As for thinking about changing AV, I suggest you spend that thinking time rooting around the Expert Settings and you will see what I mean by avast is still one of the most configurable AVs out there.
No. I don’t agree. This was discussed a lot. Automated action should be “send to Chest” and not “ask”.
The problem is solved in actual beta version for Safe Mode.
We just need a boot time access to the Chest. I think it would be easier to have a CD/DVD for booting rather than developing access at boot time (anyway, you need to configure avast as a boot option, the MBR is involved, etc., the CD/DVD is more reliable).
As i see you all agree with the default actions… And i’m being a little drastic about this, i know.
But ia have had already some really bad experiences with default options on some applications, and i really think that it should be asked to the user what to do when something happens.
I know too, that some users don’t know what to choose, but what about making an option in the installation so the user could choose the kind of experience he has.
Choose in the installation between:
Inexperienced user, that accepts all the defaults
Experienced user, that will be asked what to do every time, with the option to change the behavior.
or:
Ask for all actions
Make default choices (work automatically)
Like this on the installation the Avast will configure itself to the options most appropriate to the user.
I already changed the advanced options to ASK, but my problem is… This i changed everything? Or did i forget something?
If it where just one option to change, than this would be easier. For example, in the general options, just one option to change it would be “ASK for action every time” = yes or no
A global preference setting might be a nice addition to have but I could take or leave it. It took me less than five minutes to go through the real-time shields and set them where I wanted them.
I am amazed some of you actually think this change was a good idea. None of the crap that happened after that disasterous update last December 2 was released would have occured if the user had the AV properly configured. Proper configuration is ALWAYS SET TO ASK. The level of expertise is not relevant. For safety reasons, the AV must ALWAYS BE SET TO ASK. Otherwise, you have the disaster that befell so many here then. Many were not able to restore all the system files Avast sent to Quarantine because they had not been told to configure Quarantine to accept unlimited amount of files and their Quarantine overflowed and other problems occured because they had default settings. Of course, you have to just somehow “know” that in the case of that disaster on Decembe 2 that you needed to not touch anything in the report window if you had settings on Ask. The only correct action during that mess was set on Ask and then on a detection you simply clicked the x in the upper right of the report window. That makes Avast 5 IGNORE.
The fact that Avast did not change it to ASK as the default after that disaster has made me wonder if Avast is actually a very good AV or not. If a user is extremely ignorant then they should not have a computer much less an antivirus program. The onus here is on the user to learn something about computers and the AV they have. I knew instantly when I saw Avast trying to tell me critical system files were viruses that something was really wrong! Avast tried to tell me that HostsMan was a trojan. With the insanely stupid settings Avast 5 has, even though Ask did work, I was not offered IGNORE! I was supposed to either BLOCK or Quarantine or Delete my HOSTS FILE because Avast had an obvious bug??!! I figured simply closing the window might act as IGNORE so that is what I did and it did act as IGNORE. Of course, I got a bunch more popups regarding essential Windows files like explorer.exe being trojan - all FP’s and I did the same thing for each so I was ok but many users had a disaster which would not have occured if the settings had been Ask as default and ignore in the list of choices.
Everyone using a computer has the responsibility to learn something about computer security and computers in general. If they refuse to do that and cry to their AV vendor to blindly make everything ok for them I say now is the time to license users and make all these irresponsible users take tests in computer security before they can be licensed to own and use a computer on the net.
I have found on Vista, that Avast has a bug and refuses to remember ASK as the Action for the Real Time scanner to take for viruses, PUP and Suspicious files. I am just about to install Avast on XP Pro to see if the bug exists on this OS also. The Action settings are forgotten on boot/reboot and have to be set every time.
This issue is not that easy. I know quite a lot of people who tells yes just “to prevent the stupid screens from interfering their daily tasks”, which is one of the reasons why I don’t recommend Avira to those people. This depends on whom we are talking of but I tend to find average joes/janes don’t know how to deal with false positives. Fortunately, they tend not to be power-users.
I had that problem with Avast 4.8 in the past, and if this where already version 5 i would be in a big problem.
But back then i was the chance to ignore, and verify what was happening. Suddenly i found out that it was a false positive, and then i had the possibility to ignore everything that Avast detected.
With the default that Avast has now, that would be a big problem in the future.
This is why i started this post, this behavior has to change.
I’m very disappointed with this, i really liked Avast.
When i found out about this options where after Avast detected another false positive in my system, and then i found that it didn’t give me a chance to ignore the operation. I was still on time to deactivate all the Avast services and then search for this options to change them. Hopefully it wasn’t too late.
If I remember from my days of using Avira Mele20 was a frequent contributor on its forum.
I agree with DavidR’s post Yesterday at 09:54:26 AM
They weren’t so blind as not to give the experienced user the option of changing this in the Expert Settings, so avast is still one of the most configurable AVs out there.
I have set my avast! to Ask in File Sytem Shield on my XP Pro system and will reboot to see what is selected.
Yeah, I made Platin at Avira forum a long time ago. They don’t have those rankings now…but it was an honor to reach that rank. I still post there a lot as I have Avira 8 (gasp!) on my host XP machine and I was a beta tester for 3 years for them so I am trying to help will the confusion and problems users are having with version 10 now.
I just installed Avast 5 on a virtual machine running XP Pro SP2. I want to see if it remembers the Action settings for the Real Time scanner. Did you check PUP and Suspicious as those are the two where the the settings get forgotten on my Vista machine. They get forgotten for Virus too but not very often and that is odd…because I would expect the forgetting to occur on all three or on none.
While configuring Avast 5 for XP, I noticed differences between Avast on XP and on Vista. I have to boot the Vista machine to be absolutely sure but I don’t think I have the archive settings under PUP and Suspicious…but maybe I just don’t remember. Too late now (past bedtime) to boot that machine and check. The statistics page I do NOT see on Vista. It says I need Flash Player for it. Well, I see it on XP and I don’t have Flash Player installed on XP. I do have Silverlight installed.
This is simple NOT true.
If the user is asked what to do, he/she could allow a malware execution.
The false positive was problematic because avast couldn’t access the Chest in Safe Mode and the user restore the file.
Now it’s possible.
On contrary. The level of the expertise is everything here. For safety reasons the file should be sent to Chest.
Advanced users should change the automatic behavior. It should be an opt-in option.
One error is not the justification for another.
Ignore does not allow the access to that particular file anyway.
I do not judge the inteligence of the people by the knowledge of how to use a computer.
As you can see, we think different… I don’t consider it neither an insannity, nor stupidity, nor a bug…
I suppose everyone has things to learn, from driving a car or using a computer. The user could trust in the expertise of the AV vendor. Otherwise, it’s better to change the antivirus you’re using.
Maybe you need to correct your avast installation (or from the scratch). avast never forgot my settings :
