Why does Avast! sometimes have a virus alert when using google?

General Topics
1

Well a few days ago I searched in Sprint in google.ca and ended up getting a virus alert for VBS Malware-gen (It was trying to connect) all of a sudden and when I disconnected it kept happening until I closed the browser. Now… What the **** happened?! :o :o Here is a video of it in action (but a different search… exact same thing except that user has Avast! pro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va55ze1VKD0

Here’s another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwKaEC7s4VY

Is this like Avast! trying to warn me the site is malicious or is it an exploit… if so the internet is not safe at all anymore :‘( :’(

Good thing avast! saved me though ;D

I never upgraded to Firefox 3.0 yet…
(This happened in Firefox 2.0.14)

So is it an exploit?

2

You have some sort of link scanner which is connecting to each link on the results page and avast! is detecting the HTML downloaded, I think.

EDIT: The flipping green stars indicate that the link is being scanned, but by what?

3

Are they green starts or green circles FWF’s image isn’t that clear and on dial-up I’m not visiting youtube, life is too short.

If green circles, see image, it is the WOT add-on for firefox.

4

I got linkscanner and wot. I guess it’s linkscanner because every video for that ends up having linkscanner.

5

There are a lot of complains with Linkscanner (bandwidth usage).
You can test Finjan, SiteAdvisor, Scandoo for instance.

6

Linkscanner is a huge waste of bandwidth in google searches as for probably 95+% of the hits you will never visit, so that is a waste of your valuable bandwidth, better to pre-scan only those you intend to visit.

7

Avast vs Google :smiley:

8

It has nothing to do with avast! but other tools scanning page content of the links returned in google search results.