2020-02-13 13:46:04

Hi all,
Well... it's happened.
I just tried to run the good ol game from Oriol known as Danger on The Wheel, and AVG popped up. Right, I thought, no big deal. Add to exceptions.
It even said, exception created. I clicked close, and I get: operation can not complete because the file contains a virus. Then, I went one step further, and scanned the game file with AVG. Guess what? No threats found.
I mean, how ridiculous can this get! The fact that is, specifically, told me that an exception was successfully created but then blocks the file anyway?

2020-02-13 14:23:43

Just use Windows Defender. It's good, fully accessible, adding exceptions is super easy barely an inconvenience, and it's built-in. No need for  separate antivirus software, especially considering that most of them might as well be malware themselves (Avast, anyone?).

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
"Cause in a game of life or death, you either live, or you die."
"Wake the fuck up, samurai. We have a city to burn."

2020-02-13 15:22:59

hi.
what happened to avast?

me and a friend of mine have made a youtube channel where we upload beats that we make. If you want to check it out, you can find it at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD0CxF … PFlCqjOtOA

2020-02-13 16:06:52

I think AVG bought them out, or vice versa.

2020-02-13 17:13:58

avg bought them

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.

2020-02-13 17:28:23

Hi.

Nope, this is not really what happened.
Back in January, Avast had this little sister data selling company called Jumpshot.
Apparently, gathered from reports and findings of tech geeks and the like, it was unvailed that Jumpshot sold data collected by Avast to companys like Microsoft and google.
Data contained things such as google search requests, watched youtube videos, visited sites and all other interesting things. Jumpshot is closed down now, but I would'nt trust Avast anytime soon.

Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2020-02-13 17:29:52

Hi.

At Aaron na it was vice versa, Avast bought AVG back in 2016 for an estimate of about 1.3 billion dollars.

At Soren, please check up facts before stating things that are simply not true, AVG didn't buy Avast.

Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2020-02-13 17:30:23

I've stopped using AVG for a while now. I just run Malwarebytes. So far, so good. Been a few snags with some stuff and adding acceptions. One issue I face with Malwarebytes is that when adding a website to allow list, I have to use the object nav on NVDA to tick the URL button, but theirs still 2 text boxes, and no matter which one I paste the URL in, it still says "please enter a valid IPV4 address" when I hit the done button.. Like, seriously???? Also, Windows defender is a pain if you use LTSC like me

NevEd.NDO#4838
My community discord:
https://discord.gg/2duutDtGFa

2020-02-13 17:32:48

I also haven't trusted avast since it was bundled with C Cleaner and installed without my permission.. I could've probably avoided it with the custom installation thing but I trusted that company because I have been using C Cleaner for years. Happen with Imgburn back in the day too, anyone remember that?

NevEd.NDO#4838
My community discord:
https://discord.gg/2duutDtGFa

2020-02-14 04:13:28

Go with windows defender, and kick AVG as its more problematic.

Their is no such thing as a master.  One is never done learning, and those who claim to be a master at something are far from becoming one!!

2020-02-14 04:47:29

avast is afast
what i meen is they try to be the fastest programs but they faled to create the acception

my new youtube channel. click subscribe if you like my stuff
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzL-l8 … YCkjOm3FIg

2020-02-14 05:14:38

The unfortunate part is even if you wanted to say screw this and get rid of the program, more often than not uninstallers are so inaccessible it's not even funny. Once I got one of these crappy antiviruses bundled with something, took forever to get rid of. At the end booted into Win PE and deleted it's files manually. There are even uninstallers that believe it or not require you to fill a captcha to uninstall the program. Granted, that's most often with PUPS but still very ridiculous. Even more ridiculous that Windows gave that much freedom to developers. Uninstalling and installing apps should be handled by the system, and that's where mobile operating systems had it done very well from the start. If you want to get rid of something, it should not involve any extra steps. Too late for that now though.

2020-02-14 08:19:55

I'll tell you about inaccessible and tedious AV. ecet internet security!
God that thing is the most annoying, disrespectful, intrusive, and glitchy thing in the world! Get this! Exclusions, don't even work!

2020-02-14 09:20:40

I used avg for years, then every version became inaccessibler, until 2014 which was utterly unusuable.
Then! once I kicked the thing they had the gaul to spam me with emails and make me fill out online forms to avoid them billing me subscription charges.

I had to get sighted help to uninstall at the finish, oh and exceptions were never handled well, even when the  interface wasn't a completely unusable  peace of crap.

In short, I'd never touch AVG with a ten foot pole, and would recommend others avoid it too.

I agree with lord Luceus here. Windows defender, perhaps supplemented with Malware bites and C cleaner is more than enough.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2020-02-14 15:53:09

Wow, when Dark says you'd better ditch it, you'd probably better ditch it.  I've heard him go on and on about avg and PC tuneup utilities for ages and always wondered what all the fuss was.  I tried checking it out but didn't find it to my liking, honestly.  To see he's finally made the switch out?  Well, I freely admit is a bit saddening.  It's not easy to have to give up something you termed accessible and then the company screws you over and then has the audacity to add insult to injury.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2020-02-14 16:40:31

Honestly, and this is just my personal opinion, but in this day and age unless you're a total newb to computing you don't even need an anti virus. Just apply the same rules you do in real life, be careful who you trust and in this case, what you run. Pretty sure in real life you wouldn't need someone to constantly follow you around and stop you every time you went to get in someone's car who may or may not be dangerous, right? About time people actually took some responsibility for their own actions.

2020-02-14 16:55:32

If it was only as simple as that. Ever heard of legitimate programs being hacked? How will yu ever know you are running something dangerous? What about system exploits? In some cases, you don't even need to run anything to get the good old ransomware encripting your files in the background while you are doing things normally without realizing it. Better stop it as soon as possible than once it already did the job.

2020-02-14 17:40:44

@haily_merry, you're echoing my sentiments and saying stuff I've said for years and years.  As for 17, that's just flat out common sense.  If you don't understand how a computer works, you'd best get an antisomething software to watch your back, but you're best off learning what a computer is, is not, can and cannot do if you're actually getting one.  I mean, I've heard people who said that if you turn off your computer it can still spy on you.  Even if you unplug it and disconnect it from everything, electricity, internet, yada yada yada it's still able to transmit information.
We all know this is a load of horse.  If you don't know that, stop reading this topic right now and go do a bit of research.  Fishing scams exist.  Ransomeware exists.  Rundll32 attacks exist.  If your computer is acting stupidly sluggish there's probably a reason why, and you'd better stop visiting whatever the last place was you visited because they've probably been infected, or stop trading usb sticks and other drives with your friends.Instead, keep a backup coppy of the latest version of MSE for win7 users whoever you are, or make sure windows defender is up to date if you're a win10 user.  Did you launch a weird page that did something more than interesting?  Hear a TTS voice telling you your computer is infected?  Telling you you'd better download such and such software or even worse, telling you that you'd better pay thousands of dollars you don't have to recover your files or else your computer will never work?  Kill your web-browser.  Control shift escape is your friend!  Terminate any processes associated with chrome, FF, Edge, whatever your surfing piggyback of choice may be.  Most PC's, particularly laptops nowadays have switches to disable your Wi-Fi connection immediately; kill that too!  Take a breather!  Run a scanner!  Find whatever possible threats you can.  Restart connection.  Watch for five minutes and see if you detect any sluggish behavior on your PC.  Inspect services and processes.  Check msconfig.  Make note of what you see and use google to find info on it if you are even slightly concerned.  Update scanners; run them again.  Rince and repeat as necessary.  Do not assume any company, security or otherwise is going to do all the work for you. If you found threats of any kind assume they might have left registry keys behind.  Clean them up.  Restart.  Cycle continues.
Fact: computer maintenance is not a set and forget kind of thing.  If you're serious about it you're going to do whatever it takes to make sure you stay protected.  It's like a freaking car; you shouldn't wait until the very last minute to charge your battery, fill your gas tank, check your oil, etc.  All technology is the same; when buying any technological piece you must assume responsibility over it.  Understand it; research it.  Ask others about it.  Forget this mentality that a piece of software is going to protect you because even it can be compromised.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2020-02-14 19:06:21

I know how computers work, and yes, i tend to be careful on the stuff I download, run, etc, but still, I have an antivirus program installed, better safe than sorry

sound designer for mental vision, and Eurofly3.
take a look at
My freesound pageWhere I post sounds I record. ps: if you use my sounds, remember to credit me smiley

2020-02-14 19:17:12

I don't think @16 is suggesting you not have an antivirus or antimalware program.  What post 16 is saying is that you shouldn't trust the program to do all your dirty work, anymore than you would trust a police officer to tell you whether or not you're drunk while driving, or if your flat tire needs a repair, or if your oil needs changed.  You wouldn't have an exterminater at your house every single hour of every single day telling you that bugs need killed.  You wouldn't have a plumber over realtime monitoring your toilets to see if pipes are working properly while you go do whatever else it is you need to do.  You wouldn't have an AC repairman watching your unit to see if the filter needs changed until it does.  YOu remember these things; AC filters need changed at least once a month.  Toilets should regularly be plunged and cleaned out once a week.  Bugs are best kept away from your home if your home is clean and there's nothing to attract them.
And the same applys to computing.  If you regularly visit high-traffic pages its best to check and see what, if anything has made it onto your PC.  Watch your own back; don't expect some program to do it for you, even if there is a price tag atatched to it.  Dark's post 14 is living proof of this last statement, as not only did they shaft him in the accessibility department but then wanted to keep him subscribed even though he clearly couldn't use the product anymore.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2020-02-14 20:28:45

@Nocturnus, back in 2012 or so , I was a big fan of pc tuneup and Avg, but every update saw them get worse, slowing up the pc, moving more and more away from a standard windows interface, using custom utilities with silly flashy interfaces that were increasingly less accessible.
I put up with the inequities in version 2012 since they'd been so successful in previous versions (remember, at that point Avg versions came out a year ahead of the actual year, EG version 2012 actually came out in late 2011, 2013 came out in late 2012 and so on).

Version 2013 slowed my pc so badly it was almost unusable and I needed AVG's own tech support to fix the problem, since that was when they actually had a helpful tech support service.

2014 fixed the slow down problem, but came with an interface so clunky that  functions like performing scans on specific parts of the system or even seeing popup notifications were impossible, let alone creating exceptions.
When Malware bites managed to munch a virus AVG couldn't touch, that was pretty much that, since by that point AVG was no longer performing the functions of an antivirus and C Cleaner could do the job of Pc tuneup nicely.

I think at this stage i haven't used aVg since 2014 or so, and as I said, wouldn't touch it with the proverbial length poll.

As to antiviruses in general, I agree with Haily.
As I've said before, viruses are like house fires. So long as you learn some basic safety and remember that if something looks dodgy it probably is, you will be okay %99 of the time, just the same way you can prevent  most house fires by not plugging 16 plugs into one power point or leaving your oven or tumble dryer on all night.

It is for that last 1 percent that an antivirus can be helpful, indeed after the AVG fiasco and my laptop utterly crashed in early 2014, I went entirely without an antivirus, and! an windows xp what's more,  for a couple of years and was completely fine, though obviously now I'm glad to make use of Windows defender just in case.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2020-02-14 20:33:55

Nocturnus, very well said and exactly what I've been trying to say for a long time. Personally I have windows defender which came preconfigured with windows 10, I don't want or need anything else. Defender is able to delete things it thinks might be viruses without monitoring your entire system 24 / 7 and slowing your system down in the process like avast does. It also has exclusions which actually work. What's more? It's completely free! You shouldn't ever, for any reason, need to pay to keep your device secure, that's BS and these companies deserve to be put out of business. Defender may not be the most secure thing in the world, but you should never assume that something is impenetrable because really, nothing is.

2020-02-14 20:36:42 (edited by Ethin 2020-02-14 20:37:56)

@16, this logic is flawed. 20 makes far more sense. The idea of "use your common sense" hasn't and never will work to protect you from the evil out there. An AV/AM program can do most of the heavy lifting for you; for example, an AV/AM can be very helpful and inform you of sites that are dangerous, suspicious, scams, etc. Common sense is not a silver bullet to protect you from malicious computer programs. It only works 50 percent of the time, if even that. Take the CCleaner virus that became popular in 2017: aAvasts servers were hacked and a malicious version of CCleaner was placed on there that would contact the command and control (C2) server after running it for 600 seconds, then it would begin to do its dirty work. Would you have known that that was malicious? Would your "common sense" be helpful there? Probably not, especially since there was no visible behavioral change to the programs functionality. It still did what it always did, but behind the scenes and invisibly it did other things. It was also on aVasts website too.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2020-02-14 20:38:39 (edited by Ethin 2020-02-14 20:39:36)

@22, Defender is also well known for taking up ridiculous amounts of CPU usage when its not doing anything. There's a certain stigma attached to it that will most likely never go away. I still prefer Malwarebytes, myself. At least MB oly consums resources when its busy and does its best not to interfere with what your doing.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2020-02-14 20:45:07

Ethin, You have a point, but again I'd like to reiterate that I don't believe in having no anti virus at all. Something like windows defender will more than likely be able to get rid of anything that wouldn't show obvious signs of being malicious, whilst leaving the rest up to common sense and constant vigilance, sorry, couldn't resist throwing a Harry Potter reference in there. What I'm very much against is the fact that these shady external companies still exist and their less than honest business practices are allowed to continue.