Safezone browser appearing outside safezone and contents won't reset

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Just noticed this - see snip.

Have I missed something?

A shortcut to safezone browser is suddenly being offered on my desktop - but it doesn’t seem to go to the safezone - it just runs the safezone chromium browser outside safezone it appears. It isn’t isolated from the desktop as far as I can tell - I can install extensions in it quite happily. I can open task manager and see it running, and run any other desktop program at the same time.

If it’s being offered as a new feature (ie as a normal browser) it surely shouldn’t claim that it is safezone and isolated?

Safezone browser is still available through gui - and still doesn’t allow extensions.

2

One thing this unlooked for new feature won’t do is connect when run in the avast sandbox - see snip.

3

The photo in the OP looks photo-shopped. ??? :o

The “About” screen normally pops up in the middle of the web page and doesn’t extend over to the right like your photo shows.

JMO :slight_smile:

4

Not sure quite what you’re suggesting - or why.

I moved it across a bit to minimise snip size and show the isolated desktop claim.

Would you like to see another with the pop-up in the original place?

5

This is a known phenomenon which I reported a l o n g time ago. On affected machines after every program update a new unsafe ‘SafeZone Brower’ shortcut appears on the Desktop.

6

Thanks

There’s something in what you say.

I have the problem on my w7 machine with the latest version of avast, but not on my xp machine.

However in the previous version of avast I had it on neither machine.

I tried uninstalling safezone and sandbox components, reboot, reinstall them, reboot.

Now safezone seems really messed up. On re-installation it was already prepopulated with bookmarks.

Stopping it and resetting it doesn’t get rid of the bookmarks.

Oh, and just for good measure, it won’t connect to the internet anyway - so it’s safe, but useless.

I’ll try a full avast uninstall/reinstall tomorrow.

7

So you admit to photo-shopping the photo.

That is all I was saying. The photo appears to be photo-shopped and now you have admitted I was correct.

Thank you.

8

I did not photo-shop anything.

I put my mouse cursor over the toolbar of the ‘about safezone browser’ popup. I left clicked, and I moved it away from the text it was covering.

Then I took the screenshot.

9

OK - Fresh install of AIS 6.0.1289 on w7 64bit after running aswclear in safemode and running ccleaner registry cleaner:

Safezone is still pre-populated with bookmarks on first opening.

Resetting safezone doesn’t remove the bookmarks.

Safezone still won’t connect to the internet.

I would muchly appreciate any help with this ???.

(Update - the good news (if there is any) is that I no longer have the shortcut to the ‘unsafe safezone’ - however since the ‘safe safezone’ is still getting my old bookmarks from somewhere without me asking it to, even when I reset it, I wonder how safe it is?

Also, safezone is intermittently connecting now - so I wonder if there was an avast safezone server problem?

10

A bit more info.

The bookmarks that keep reappearing after safezone reset are from IE.

At first I thought the bug was that safezone was automatically re-importing them after reset.

I have deleted certain bookmarks in IE to test this.

Those bookmarks still appear in safezone after a reset - so the bug appears to be that safezone reset isn’t actually doing anything.

edit - and the other bug of course is that safezone somehow loaded itself with IE bookmarks on first opening after a clean install.

11

I’m also experiencing similar problems. I had a safezone shortcut appear on my desktop and now safezone won’t reset, its remembering my browser history. Anyone help?

12

What OS do you have?

13

I have Windows 7 Home premium, 64-bit.

14

Exactly the same as the machine I have got the problem with!

If you had a different OS I would suggest a fresh install, but since it’s the same as mine there’s not much hope for that I suspect.

There seem to have been a few reports of various different bugs with safezone in this latest version of AIS.

Hopefully pk and the other devs are taking notice (though they’ve been noticeably silent so far).

If you really need to use safezone you could try reverting to an earlier version of AIS.

I am taking the view that I managed fine before I had safezone, and unless/until I can fully trust it I’ll do without it.

Unless one of the devs pops up and asks for some investigation work on this bug, I am going to uninstall safezone (at least until the next version of avast is released).

One more bit of info that may or may not be of use to anyone looking into this bug.

I tried another fresh install this morning (this time uninstalling avast and running aswclear both in safe mode).

It made no difference - but I did notice that the bookmarks it is prepopulated with are always historic bookmarks from the same user account - whatever account I open safezone in - another oddity ::).