One of my problems with the recent edition of Avast is that the main interface is less of an “expert” interface, and dumbs-down a lot of the features. When I double-click on the icon in the taskbar, I’m now brought to “Run Smart Scan” with no other options on that page. I prefer the little manual link below that, where I can bring up an expert interface. It would be nice to be able to switch away from the single-button scan by default, and bring up the older interface.
Anyway, the main topic is the “Unreputable browser toolbars found” popup I just received. It’s claiming that the following toolbar has a reputation of one star:
ActivClient Security Module
HID Global
Registers ActivClient PKCS #11 Security Module in Mozilla Products
This is my security software, so I’m a little concerned that it’s been rated one star, but also, I have no additional information as to why it was rated a one star. Is it a security issue? Did it cause my browser to run slower? Did someone else report they had issues with it? What does that rating/review mean?
Also, and this is important: 1) I’d like to be able to report my OWN experience with this browser plugin/toolbar and 2) If I accept the risk of the toolbar (it’s work-issued, by a company that’s extremely reputable [HID Global makes door access systems]), I don’t want Avast to tell me every time I run a scan, that I have a bad browser plugin/toolbar.
I’m not sure I like the nebulous “Reputation” without an obvious way to report a false positive, or even write/submit a review of my own. Was that one start review one guy who had a bad, slow, old PC, and any plugin would cause it to run slowly because he was swapping into page space on the hard drive, or does that one star represent thousands of angry customers? I just don’t know. It’s useless information (at this time).
At this point, I’m going to press “SKIP” and hope it doesn’t come back but, seriously, now you’ve cast doubt on one of my plugins and I seriously have no idea if that doubt is warranted or not.
Lastly, in going through the limited (four) options on the left of the main menu, I don’t even SEE a “browser cleanup” listed anywhere. So which of the tools contains that? Why isn’t there a way for me to re-run that manually, so I can verify that everything’s okay now that I’ve skipped the one that had a false positive?
As a long-time Avast customer, with dozens of consulting customers who also use Avast because I’ve led them toward Avast, I much preferred the old interface, where I could choose what I wanted to do and when. Also, there’s way too much cruft in the app, that’s challenging to unbundle/uninstall without worrying about removing something important.
I like anti-virus. I like anti-spyware and anti-adware. I’m not sure about the rest of it.