hi, and thanks in advance for anyone who might have good advice for me in this situation. my company operates a very large network of niche online dating websites internationally, and suddenly yesterday every site in the network started being blocked by Avast Web Shield for some variation on “SCAM”. when i say very large network, i am talking tens of thousands of websites, and i havent seen on that is not blocked. this leads me to believe that the block is not through some URL blacklist, but actually something that Avast is seeing that they dont like in the code of the sites. the problem is that we have filed false positive reports and arent getting any detailed information on what that could be, and therefore have no idea what could need to be corrected.
here is an example of what we are seeing with Avast installed:
Has anyone had luck reaching a human at Avast and working with them toward correction on an issue like this? This is extremely harmful to the business every minute it is happening. we have spent (and continue to spend) massive amounts of money both developing custom software and employing agents to keep scammers off of our sites, and take this very seriously - but without any detail on the reason for the block i really have nothing to go on.
thank you for this. i was able to submit a false positive report to Avira and they actually sent confirmation that it will be removed and that will be reflected within 4 hours or so in the VirusTotal portal. it does seem that Avast and Avira cooperate quite a bit, so its possible that could be what is getting us blocked - but not all of our URLs are showing as malicious on Avira, yet every single URL i try from our network is blocked by Avast.
Im hoping that Avira has some proactive measure in place to identify sites in the same network and remove those, and that Avast follows suit, but at this point thats all I really can do I suppose. hope.
it does seem that Avast and Avira cooperate quite a bit, so its possible that could be what is getting us blocked
Note I don’t work for Avast, but I’m an Avast user.
Avast and Avira has no association/Cooperation as far as I’m aware, so I’m not sure where you are getting this from.
Avira is calling it Malware Avast is calling it URL:Scam.
You will notice Avast isn’t on the on-demand scanners for websites. The Web Shield is an on-access scanner, hence you won’t see it in the VT results.
The Web Shield live scan will not only scan the original landing page, but also external link checks.
The whole concept of denying access to a website because it may contain a virus is akin to a condom company advertising their products with the following warning : Our product will not allow you to have sex with someone that is ill, our products are meant to be used on ill-free people only. wtf???
No other antivirus completely blocks access to a website, they will warn you if they detect a virus they can not protect you from. But in this case, even a known virus or the mere hint of it is an excuse for Avast to totally forbid you (as if it were a parental control) on accessing the site.
Like having the most powerful army full of conscious objectors that will not go to war and are enlisted only during peace time. ffs! what a joke
Given that they are both using different names for the blocking the site. I made an assumption (dangerous I know) that they aren’t collaborating as far as the signature/detections are concerned.