I won’t name names, but the following came from a very reputable site which I have subscribed to and depended on for years. I trust them implicitly. This was a personal response I received when I posted a comment which advocated FOR Avast IS, which I am presently using. In my comment, I spoke highly of the program and the forum. But, I’m starting to wonder about my choice of security for my computer. I’ve noticed in the recent past that Avast isn’t being rated quite as highly as it was previously. In the past, the site I speak of was surely one of your best advocates and could not rate Avast highly enough. They were 100% responsible for my trying the free version and immediately going with the paid version, but they, at least, apparently no longer believe in your product. Is Avast now trying to follow in the footsteps of McAfee, Norton? I’m really not interested in hearing comments on this from users like me. I’d like to hear comments from Avast.
[i]"Use Process Manager by Sysinternals and watch your resources – Avast is now a resource hog. Plus it has useless features such as “web site ratings” which is nothing more than group of “members” deciding on which sites are good and which sites are bad. WOT was ruined by attention-hungry members who used scripts to rate hundreds of thousands of sites they never even visited. Plus – we have the political zealots – right and left – rating sites “dangerous” because they don’t agree with the religion or the politics of the site.
Avast has a firewall which runs in the background --and totally useless email scanner which is nothing more than a marketing ruse. Why? Because email is a file like any other file. Avast doesn’t have a “JPG” scanner – that’s a file. A good antivirus scans all incoming files – including email. The email scanner does nothing but corrupt inboxes and hinder the sending and receiving of email.[/i]
There are many reasons why Avast is no longer recommended by us – and it’s not just because of its bulkiness – my son and my best friend both had to format and reinstall Windows when Avast failed to protect them from a Trojan – and they both had up-to-date definitions."
Many people like to put down avast and promote other AV’s just cozz they have been paid for promoting other AV’s and putting down avast!..this is totally unbiased and proofless…so that’s absolutely nonsense…Use what u trust…have layered protection and remember 1 thing NO AV IS 100%
Look at chart in 2nd link…exclude all AV’s and compare all the top AV’s like Bitdefender,kaspersky,F-secure gdata and bullguard with Avast! free [all are using power 2 av engines except Btidefender and kaspersky]
Process Explorer (or Monitor? there’s no Process Manager) will show you some numbers regarding the memory usage - but unless you are the developer of that particular software and know exactly how it works internally, you have very little chance of interpreting them correctly. Long time ago, I tried to elaborate some more on Wilders.
As for the e-mail scanner… well, I guess the guys have never heard of worms like Nimda, for example, or don’t know how an e-mail scanner works. An e-mail is not a file originally - maybe after the mail client receives it and writes it on disk, but you cannot rule out the possibility of a bug in that e-mail program that actually executes an exploit during the processing of those data, before storing the file on disk.
The same is true for a Web scanner - yes, the web browser may (but certainly doesn’t have to) write the downloaded files on disk (into the cache) - but if there’s a bug in the browser or a helper module (and there have been a lot of them), the malicious payload may get executed before the file scanner has any chance to scan it - i.e. too late.
So there certainly is a reason for those additional shields - relying purely on a file scanner is naive.
Yes, WebRep is a community thing, based on users voting. Everyone is free do disable that feature.
Plus it has useless features such as "web site ratings" which is nothing more than group of "members" deciding on which sites are good and which sites are bad. WOT was ruined by attention-hungry members who used scripts to rate hundreds of thousands of sites they never even visited. Plus -- we have the political zealots -- right and left -- rating sites "dangerous" because they don't agree with the religion or the politics of the site.
True but it is not essential to your security, it is the same as WOT, advisory
Use Process Manager by Sysinternals and watch your resources -- Avast is now a resource hog.
On a modern system the amount of memory used is not really relevant as windows tries to use as much memory as possible, unused memory is wasted in reality. More important is CPU cycles and I am currently running a scan on my system whilst I type this and my CPU usage is about 20%.. Not a lot
Why? Because email is a file like any other file
Not strictly true as it has a header which can hide the origin, it can carry HTML malware or a compressed virus....etc...
my son and my best friend both had to format and reinstall Windows when Avast failed to protect them from a Trojan -- and they both had up-to-date definitions."
This can be said of any Antivirus, malware changes on a daily basis. And the ones that require the system to be reformatted (the true viruses) are blocked. A trojan could have been cleaned within 25 or 30 minutes, plus what were they doing when they were infected
I clean systems on a daily basis and all antivirus programmes have been loaded on the systems that I clean. So on that basis the friend and son will be changing AV’s weekly
No, I won’t do that. I didn’t write this to get anyone in trouble or start a war – or leave myself open to lible. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have written it at all. Although, in fact, I don’t think I’m letting any cat out of the bag because I don’t think this particular source is hiding how they feel about things. You could probably find it yourself if you were so inclined.
I have been trusting and using Avast; in fact the last time I purchased a 3-year contract and even purchased one for my daughter. About the same time I talked my best friend into purchasing Avast IS for all 3 of her computers, which she is still using it. However, she has been having some problems on her newer laptop with Windows 7. Avast would not complete a scan. I told her I would try to help her get some answers from the forum if she would tell me exactly what it was doing. But she wrote today and said it seems to be working again and that she will keep an eye on it.
I just checked with AV Comparatives, which I am told is top notch if you are wanting to find out ratings for security programs. I even have trouble reading their reports but it would appear to me that Avast is right up there in the top few.
I appreciate the comments that were posted. You see, altho it’s true that I trust my original source – I also have lots of trust in several I have worked with and received answers from before on Avast. I guess for me, I will continue to use my Avast until it gives me darned good reason to dump it.
So sorry, but I think, you misunderstood me. I’m satisfied, you corrected your profile and/or system and made it more solid or stronger.
Greatings from Hamburg to Alaska.
@ Nikilet,
Quoting someone without giving the source is totally meaningless.
It’s also not valid. If the person making that statement isn’t willing to back it up,
it’s totally useless.
Accusing someone or something with giving them the ability to respond directly to the source is considered here-say.
I fully agree with you on the SP3 hijack directed at HDW38 and Kila (Start your own thread or use the PM function)
Bob: I think it’s time to close this thread. My source probably would be willing to back it up. I’m not willing to get in the middle of it and therefore should have kept my mouth shut.
Thanks for standing behind me on the SP3 HiJack. Very irritating trying to follow a thread and then having all this unassociated nonsense thrown in the middle.
My sincere apologies to you, and to anyone else who reads this. As long as I was not willing to disclose the source and “get in the middle” I should not have posted. Have a great weekend, everyone!
However, on the other hand, some info was given in response by igloo and essexboy that I was glad to know so thank you guys for that!!!
(It’s part of your security!) ;D