I contacted Avast back in August regarding a website that had apparently been blocked for: “selling fake goods” there appears to be a lot of these (according to Avast).
No response from Avast so my hosting company changed the IP, some weeks later and it is blocked again, still no reply from Avast (even though the website belongs to a friend, who is an artist and doesn’t sell anything from the site).
So he (the owner) contacts them (twice) and still no response… Is this usual? I always recommend Avast to my clients but this isn’t making me feel very confident in their abilities.
Hi Milos, sorry I have been slow in responding I was out of the office.
I used the: report false positive web form to contact Avast back in August (or thereabouts) I didn’t get a response so I contacted my hosting company (partially out of concern as I am the only person who really has access and I was concerned that the site had been hacked), used the online scanners (no virus, no trojans, no malware). My hosting company checked the site and presumably also managed to contact Avast because they told me Avast said the site was selling fake goods and that the best thing that they could do was change the I.P.
Site was up for a month or so and then October/November time the actual owner noticed that Avast had blocked the site again and he attempted to contact Avast twice (I do not know how, whether by email or web form).
The site has been up for a couple of years and no problems and no updates in that time, so it hasn’t had anything added or removed - so if it has had any malware it has miraculously cured itself.
A simple look at the site shows that it is 1. A site designed to promote an artist’s original work 2. You cannot buy anything from the site (it obviously shows the artist’s work and gives you contact details if you wish to purchase or commission a piece - rather pointless as a website otherwise) 3. It contains nothing but the artist’s original work, no fake Canon batteries like amazon or dodgy memory cards like eBay etc.
Can you tell me if it has been reported by someone and not checked by avast or if the Avast block is autonomous and triggered by say the spry menus?
Obviously he is not happy because anyone using Avast (Avast is the only known programme that blocks the site - checked with Sophos, Norton, AVG…) they think the site is infected and it affects his reputation or else they don’t view it and he is losing business.
Obviously, anyone who uses the web responsibly wishes for it to be clean but if it is a false positive and Avast has failed to act responsibly then they are not helping achieve a safe web and they are responsible for a loss of trade - which I am sure would not be their intention.
Many thanks for your time and trouble Milos and I hope that we can sort this out.
Hello,
thank you for the info. I’m sorry that he didn’t get any reply from AVAST. I thought it was reported few days back not few months back ;-). So if he used http://www.avast.com/contact-form.php or virus@avast.com with “False positive” in subject he should get some reply from AVAST.