This Antivirus Plugin Makes You LESS Secure - Comments Page 1

What a story to start the New Year off with! AVG has been a respected name in the anti-virus field for many years, and some people I know still swear by it. The lengths to which some companies will go appears to be limitless. It seems that one must be extra vigilant when downloading anything, from anywhere. A few well known download sites have recently been questioned as to how many "extras" are loaded onto PCs when one chooses to use them as their download source. What a world we live in!

What a pity. We can now add AVG to the list with VW as companies to avoid doing business with. Their first priority is far different from mine.

AVG did not reach it's formerly respected position by being populated by management thinking of this type. It is a shame that Bob's Marketing and Security conversation likely took place without upper management's knowledge or approval.

AVG has several different anti-virus programs. Some you pay for and others are free. Does this path apply to all of their software? When I was looking at your newsletter, I was attempting to figure that out.

I had trouble with AVG about a year and a half ago. Not the FREE version . . . I paid good money for this version of AVG . . . the bottom line . . . AVG deleted all my programs after I allowed them on to my computer to "correct" AVG . . It even deleted itself!! I'm through with AVG forever!!!

FWIW, AVG Free went wonky last month, and I had to delete it. I changed to Avast, and wonder how well that will work. BTW, in talking to other keyboardists, I have gotten affirmation of my complaint, so its not just mee!!

AVG really screwed up! This one is very bad. I was on another website, that is computer related and read about this major faux pas.

One of the readers had this on his computer and could not get rid of it. He tried various suggestions, but, none of them worked. I suggested that he try Revo Uninstaller Free. It worked and he commended, no wonder the other solutions were not working, AVG Web Tuner was located in 430 files and registry! Now, that's a very, very involved program.

So, I will suggest should you have installed this puppy, to use Revo Uninstaller Free, it should clean it out. :)

I started the New Year with Sophos Home and it seems to be working OK! It doesn't have the bells and whistle's that Avast had but it boots up much quicker. I have run AVG and it performed OK but this new twist is disappointing!

It is not just AVG. They are all at it. Microsoft adding adverts and even the honourable Pirisoft sending you to a download site to update their free Cleaner (where you run the risk of being mislead) and Avast, which pesters daily to 'go pro'. There is a lot of money to be made or lost.

Profit is not a dirty word. But AVG deserves to be run out of town. This is shameful.
A big thank you to Bob for letting us know.

Switched from AVG to Avast 3 weeks ago due to AVG selling details.

I am afraid that the whys and wherefors of the responsibilities for aspects of security inter-layer security are beyond me, but when you say: "installing AVG Web Tuneup breaks Chrome’s security in ways that allow bad guys to redirect a user to any Web site they wish", it makes me wonder if Chrome, also, is a little at fault that it can be "broken" in this fashion.

Always great to get your stuff. Thanks for sharing.

I used the free version some in the early 2000's while in South Korea and had nothing but virus trouble. I have never had any faith in AVG. I never believed any of the reviews on how great AVG was after my experience with them at that time. I for one am not surprised.

I stopped using AVG years ago because they became a resource hog. (I also had computers that had it installed get infected while computers with other AV products were fine.) Appears that there are other issues with them as well.

Didn't AVG get into some trouble this past summer for something similar? I stopped using AVG because they would automatically install things such as the ask.com toolbar and some kind of "AVG Safe Web" Firefox plugin that was a pain to remove and I think one website even said this plug-in was used by AVG also to gather information about customers websites they visit while "protecting" users from "fraudulent sites" when using google or other search engines. It's unfortunate they chose to do all this stuff since they were once considered a great anti-virus vendor. It does make you wonder if the others are doing this on not only their free but also their paid versions. Another reason I left AVG was because they kept trying to get me to install Web Tune-Up and other software of theirs that I don't need.

Just wanted to say thanks, looking at using the best in the future. Love the blogs they really spell it out!

I was a long time AVG free user but have recently switched to Avast for the following reasons.
1. I got fed up with AVG trying to foist unwanted add-ins on me.
2. I had several failed system backup attempts using Macrium Reflect (unable to read source disk error messages.) As a last ditch attempt, I uninstalled AVG and lo and behold...successful backup!

I installed Avast in its place. Your article makes me feel better about leaving AVG in the dust.

I bounced around between several free antivirus programs for a long time, but finally settled on Norton 360 Premier. It has protected me very well for several years, at a cost of about $90 per year for multiple computers. Plus, it includes many other useful utilities. Money well spent. It does take a fair amount of resources, but with today's fast processors, it has a negligible impact on performance. Plus, no nag screens.

AVG hijacked my browser--appeared to happen during the uninstall process. I was uninstalling because I was tired of their pop-ups and aggressive behavior. Bypassing security rules and leaving users vulnerable to a host of new attacks is terrible. I won't be back. But I wonder if there are remnants of their bad programming left in my system that I now need to uninstall manually? Would hate to leave AVG's vulnerabilities in my system even after uninstall.

I had AVG change my search engine from google to Yahoo. Lots of trouble and I ended up re-installing windows to get rid of it.

I had a similar problem with Avast which blocked Internet Explorer. Good thing I mostly use Firefox but that anti-virus was a no go as well.

So far I haven't had any problems with Bitdefender with no unwanted PUPs. It just sits there and seems to do it's job.