Went on a British web site today (twice) , and I am from the UK, to look up something on our NHS site. I do not know why, but I had an Avast pop up window stating that www.nhs.uk is a phishing site. Clearly this Avast isn’t that good if it disallows a British Medical site by stating ‘Connection aborted’ and ‘We prevented your connection to www.nhs.uk because it is a dangerous webpage. Threat category: HTML:Phishing-BWT [Phish]’.
Seems like Avast is not as great as it makes out to be. I have four months of this Premium remaining, and certainly will not be re-registering with a security site that seem to disallow an authentic NHS medical site in relation to our NHS medical system here in the UK.
Seems like Avast has no clue as to which sites are safe, and I wonder if it allows some unsafe sites to go undetected.
What I also find strange is that the NHS doesn’t appear to be a secure connection I just entered nhk(.)uk the (brackets to prevent posting an active link).
Using the bog standard http or www connection (even when I specifically gave an https link) this could leave the site and your connection vulnerable.
Note the image was before I hit the return key.
Though it does appear to be verified by Digi Cert.
I am using the Avast Premium Security, and the Avast browser. Four times I have tried to use the NHS website where I have an account, and each time the Avast Web Guard has stated that this site is a phishing site, and is dangerous. I had no problems when I used the Avast free version, and since using the Premium version, I have not gone onto the NHS site until today. Clearly something is wrong with Avast, as I can gain access to the NHS site via MS browser that has no Avast attachments.
A screenshot would be very helpful with the more details/information option selected.
Essentially the Web Guard is the same in Avast Antivirus Free as it is in Avast Premium. Which makes the screenshot of what you are getting more important.
What happens if you use a different browser to the ASB ?
I don’t use it as it is based on the Chromium language (Google Chrome, which I don’t use).
Another option is adding an exception to the Avast Menu > Settings > General > Exceptions, but that isn’t finding the problem.
I use Avast Free Antivirus on a Windows 11 Home PC. With Firefox, I received the same phishing site rejection that you did. However, at the top of that page, I saw:
Cookies on the NHS website
We use some cookies to make this website work.
Help improve online NHS services by also accepting analytics cookies.
Your choice will be remembered for other online NHS services, such as the NHS App.
When I accepted the cookies, the Avast rejection cleared and the “normal” NHS opening page was displayed. I then cleared all cookies Firefox had just saved and attempted the NHS link again in a fresh tab. I again was prevented from Avast from accessing the site and again, after accepting the HNS analytic cookies, gained access. One of your browser’s add-ons may be preventing you from seeing the accept cookie message. Try the site on a browser with no add-ons active if you can’t get into the NHS site with the browser you’ve been using. Good luck! I’m on the other side of the pond, wishing I lived on your side! (Grass always greener on the other side phenomenon?)
Thanks for taking the time to help the Original Poster.
Whilst I had no problem connecting. I do actually have an NHS Account, but I have never logged on via my browser, I use my phone so it shouldn’t have recognised me.
I was actually able to log on using the details I used when creating the account on my mobile. But up until then I had never been challenged nor had an Avast Alert, weird.
That said I also have two security based firefox add-ons, uBlock Origin Lite, uMatrix (as in my details), but not a peep out of them and I had no exclusions set or lowered the checking level for the NHS site. Very strange.
Thank you for raising this, and thanks @DavidR for the deep dive!
We’ve run a check on the reported domain and found 1 subdomain-specific detection that most probably caused this. This is now marked as clean in the Avast database. This change may take up to 1 hour to take full effect. Please accept my apology for the inconvenience caused.
