I did few tests & have observed that enabling PUP sometimes detects 1-2-3 more malware, & I checked the malware with VirusTotal & sometimes the malware detected as PUP by Avast were detected by many in VirusTotal as Trojan & other names.
I dont know whats the PUP criteria for each Vendors. I have seen quite a few detection where malware were detected as Trojan, PUP & other name. Some Vendor detected the malware as PUP while the other detected it as Trojan & the other detected with another name. I dont know whats the criteria of PUP for Avast but I find sometimes when Avast detects a malware as PUP, the same is detected by many in VirusTotal as Trojan & Avast is the only with PUP detection.
I think PUP should be enabled by default in Avast.
What do You think? Your Precious Vote & Comment Frds
Well, I vote no. For one basic reason. PUP detection includes some legitimate applications under its umbrella. An average end-user would go to download one of these, and Avast! sends them a red pop-up saying “threat detected”. Then they jump right to thinking this is full blown malware they just downloaded. Then they get mad at the site they got it from, say they are distributing malware…or they figure this is an Avast! false positive that they refuse to fix…either result is bad karma for someone.
Summarily, the average user does not want to consider “possibly bad”, they want a clear-cut, black&white, yes or no detection. PUP detection is something that requires some thought before making a decision. So for that reason alone it should be left up to someone who actually knows what a PUP is to decide whether it should be on or off in their setup.
That being said, PUP is turned on for me in all available areas. ;D
@ naren17
It is enabled in most of the on-access shields and not in others and for on-demand scans by it is off by default in the pre-defined scans, but you can enable it but it isn’t essential. I believe it is on in the web shield, mail shield and it is in the file system shield. I don’t use P2P or IM applications, so don’t have those shields installed.
With a resident on-access antivirus like avast, the need for frequent on-demand scans is much depreciated. For the most part the on-demand scan is going to be scanning files that would be otherwise be dormant or inert. If they were active files then the on-access file system shield would be scanning them before being created, modified, opened or executed.
So it isn’t so critical in an on-demand scan.
So before launching into this Poll, you should have investigated the avast resident, on-access shield settings. See image extract from the help file as this is common to most of the resident shields.
I hate polls, waste of time and effort, as this poll is invalid as you can’t ask a yes no answer when the resident (important) shields are enabled and the on-demand (not-essential, for inert, dormant files) scan is off by default.
I have all of mine set to Ask (control freak) and NoAction as the second and final action.
That is why I went to the Help file for the defaults and that, clearly says send to chest is default.
So there is clearly something not right, but there is no way I would set to defaults to test this as I have far to many changes. Since there is no way to export or import settings I will give that a pass.
The screenshot you have posted is for the Action i.e what Avast’s defaults action are when malware are detected.
But the default setting for PUP is Disabled in all the realtime shields.
I know I can enable it. I posted here coz its not enabled by default & many average users dont change the default settings. And the main reason being as I have mentioned in the first post with a VirusTotal example that only Avast detected as PUP & many detected as Trojan so in this case the detection is likely to be a Trojan than PUP.
If I again see a detection like this I will post the link here.
And its just what I think.
I know Avast softwares are for mojority of users, easy & effective, so the balance of security & performance must be there.
And about the Poll, well what should I say? But I can assure you that the Poll will not fall & harm anyone.
Well if avast have left it off by default I tend to accept that they know more about this than I do. I have never enabled it in all of the time that this option has been there in avast5 onwards.
+2 Most, if not all, polls like this are a waste of time. Due to the fact that if you asked 20 users what they use for settings, you will get 20 different answers.
Its a simple poll to know what users of Avast think about the PUP default settings. Majority of users use default settings. And the reason for the poll I mentioned in the opening post. And in my previous post I posted a link for the same.
Its fine if you find the poll boring or waste of time. Its totally your wish to vote or not or comment what you think about this poll. Its your right to appreciate or criticise & I like this gesture. With every appreciation or criticism you learn something. Hope both of us learned something.
I dont think the poll is invalid in any way. If you or any one think so its fine. Keep the comments coming. But this time try to improvise a bit. Bored of the same line.
IMO it would have been better to ask, “which is better PUP’s enabled or disabled?” And not even bother with a poll. And you would have accomplished the same thing.
I voted for it to be disabled by default. I have had a few things detected as PUPs and every one was a safe file. Even if some other vendors detect it on VirusTotal (even as a “trojan”), that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. Read the user votes and you will usually see that the file is actually not malicious. If PUP detection is enabled by default, it could cause useless problems and anxieties for novice users.
The main reason that particular file is flagged is that it has a double extension. Many antimalware apps flag such things as a matter of course and they may or may not be malicious.
I have a drive with Win7 on it & Avast Free, Avast flags mpc-hc.exe (media player classic - home cinema) & dbpoweramp music converter as PUP’s when the apps are more than trustworthy.
