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Thread: AVG 8 OMG!

  1. #1
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Question AVG 8 OMG!

    I suppose I am like many of you and have used AVG (formerly Grisoft) for a number of years with complete or at least reasonable satisfaction.

    Well, all bets are off right now?

    I downloaded and installed AVG 8.0 with no problem. Sure, a couple of things didn't automatically start, but an update soon sorted that.

    Sooooooooooooo.............................. I let it run (using FF 2) and had a looksee.

    Well, I really love that dropdown spam serving feature........... honestly I do

    Then I find that my Zone Alarm reports that Avgcmgr.exe is wanting to get a thing called "Prevalence Reporter" launched onto the internet??????????? wtf?

    "The computer says NO!"............ so it tries again about half an hour later??? wtf?

    I checked 9 of these attempts:

    6 = Various Google addresses
    1 = The Planet.com (Houston TX)
    1= Internet Systems Consortium (CA)
    1= BBC News Online UK (yeah, for real!)

    You might have noticed that none of those are AVG addresses?

    What this crap is supposed to do is to look at websites that you pull up in a
    search engine that appear "dodgy" and report it back..... but to whom, and what else goes with it?

    Sooooooooooooo I takes me a closer look ............................

    Apparently this crap send these dodgy site results back to whoever they feel?

    What do they send?............. I cannot be bothered to find out.......... given that deleting AVG free and replacing it is a much easier solution.

    Oh! I did have a look around the internet........... site owners really love the way it increases their hits, screws their statistics and their bandwidth bills

    It actually increases your bandwidth bills........... and that of sites that are visited?

    Has any sub-moron wondered why the AO site visit values have increased?

    Use FF and just suspend the AVG stuff?

    Last edited by nihil; June 27th, 2008 at 10:10 PM.

  2. #2
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    Haha,

    Well I for one can say I'm glad you posted this... that AVG 8 upgrade notice has been hounding me for days and I just keep putting it off... Kinda glad I have been now.

    Thanks.

  3. #3
    Senior Member t34b4g5's Avatar
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    I regret ever ever upgrading to the new 8.0, it instantly reminded me of nortan. i have been using pc tools antivirus for a few weeks now. And i am absolutly loving it at the moment.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by HTRegz
    ... that AVG 8 upgrade notice has been hounding me for days and I just keep putting it off... Kinda glad I have been now.
    I, too, have been nagged by the upgrade notice for a couple of weeks. I'd read elsewhere that a number of well-respected users had recommended against upgrading so that made me delay. Unfortunately, the old version won't be supported for much longer so I reckon I'll have to do some research and find an alternative.

    I use IE7 (rather than FF and I appreciate nihil's comment in the final line) and the OP suggested using PC Tools AntiVirus. Does anyone else "rave" about this or are there any other recommendations for a good free (or cheap) alternative? I've been very pleased to use AVG for quite a while but it looks like I'm going to be turning away from this imminently.

  5. #5
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    I personally use Symantec Endpoint Protection. I always just grab a copy from work... I'm not sure how it works for licensing... You don't enter any key and there is no expiration. For other PCs that I've worked on, I've recently been loading them with ClamAV. http://www.clamav.net/
    Quitmzilla is a firefox extension that gives you stats on how long you have quit smoking, how much money you\'ve saved, how much you haven\'t smoked and recent milestones. Very helpful for people who quit smoking and used to smoke at their computers... Helps out with the urges.

  6. #6
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    Thank you. Colleagues have had bad experiences with Norton/Symantec so I'll look at ClamAV.

  7. #7
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    I've also had some "bad" experiences with symantec. However, that was only in a corporate environment when trying to roll out upgrades of the product to clients. Not so much patches as going from one version to another. I've found it's better to uninstall the old and then install the new instead of doing an in place upgrade.

    Otherwise, I've been quite happy with the corporate version. I love the central console, central quarantine, and "group policy" type management for the firewall, av, etc. I love the aggregated reporting of antivirus, spyware, firewall, etc. I really like the alerting features.

    Mgt loves their reporting to get an overall snapshot of the systems as far as protection, infections and the "device lock" capabilities. I see them looking at the dashboard quite frequently.

    I could also be biased as I've never used anything else other than Symantec in a corporate environment.

    I do not like their home products. I despise Norton 360. It's annoying and in your face.

    However, if you're only trying to protect one machine and you have pretty safe online habbits, then ClamAV should do the trick. I don't think Barracuda Spam Fiewall would use it if it wasn't good. However, it's not some all in one solution like you've been seeing from most vendors. It's not a firewall and it'll allow changes to your system. It relies on you to make sure you're running under a user account that's not god. Maybe you should use it along side of windows defender or spybot SD.
    Quitmzilla is a firefox extension that gives you stats on how long you have quit smoking, how much money you\'ve saved, how much you haven\'t smoked and recent milestones. Very helpful for people who quit smoking and used to smoke at their computers... Helps out with the urges.

  8. #8
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    Yes phish~, it's for a single PC and the user (me) practices safe hex!

    I'll avoid Symantec/Norton as it would be for a home situation - I don't have any personal experience of use in a corporate environment. It looks like it will be ClamAV plus my usual Spybot, AdAware and HiJackThis.

  9. #9
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Free (for personal use) AVs that I have found OK are Avast! and Avira.

    http://avast.virus-tools.com/?s=gouk...FQyvQwodZD-1uA

    http://www.avira.com/en/pages/index.php

    As for AVG 8 I am working on it still. If you turn off the browser plug-ins then the annoying dropdown adverts go away, but it still tries to run avgcmgr.exe

    Soooooooooooooo

    I slid into this particular folder in C:\programs................... errrr, then I found this .exe file and renamed it .old and created a similar file in Text Editor and renamed it to .exe then rebooted

    But I cannot have done anything wrong, because the AVG console reports everything is running "hot straight and normal"

    Muhahahahahahahahahahaha

    Not that I would suggest that anyone on AO would circumvent any ULA, of course.

    Incidentally, apart from the bandwidth and privacy issues.............. what happens if you search happens to bring up a kpr0n?.............. good ole AVG will visit the site using your IP credentials.

    Anyone here believe that you will get a fair trial on a KP rap?

  10. #10
    Senior Member C:\Saw's Avatar
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    This isn't an antivirus (rather an anti-trojan) but it is very low resource (i even ran it on a 32mb ram Win95 computer with no slowdown!):

    http://www.comodo.com/boclean/boclean.html

    It's from Comodo--you know, makers of the BEST free firewall

    Seriously this little guy has saved my a** a few times
    I feel compelled to ask every windows user to try it--you wont be disappointed


    ...not that i use windows
    "...to give correctly is to give them what they need from us, for it would not be skillful to bring gifts to anyone that are in no way needed."
    --Socrates

    *Einstein Would Be Proud*

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