Given all the complaints we read about here, I wanted to complement avast for something done right:
I am assisting someone with testing a pre-release of his updated program. The regular version downloads, installs, and runs just fine. But the pre-release of the next version — which was downloaded from a non-standard URL — set off avast warnings based on “file reputation”: first suggesting that I abort the connection [to cancel the download], and then, suggesting that the “potentially unsafe” installer be run in a sandbox; and finally, suggesting that the installed programs also be run in a sandbox.
I think that’s a great feature of avast: that it can detect a potentially dangerous program despite it having a common/valid name, by virtue of the fact that it was downloaded from a non-standard URL. My complements to the creators!