Avast phoning home ?

[Shadow]

The executable ashserv.exe started phoning home, I've had
avast installed for years and this never happened before.
Anyone know what changed ?
[]'s

PS ... ashserv.exe is NOT the updater.

 

[Slarty]

The executable ashserv.exe started phoning home, I've had
avast installed for years and this never happened before.
Anyone know what changed ?
[]'s

PS ... ashserv.exe is NOT the updater.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/ashserv.exe-451.html

 

[Shadow]

The executable ashserv.exe started phoning home, I've had
avast installed for years and this never happened before.
Anyone know what changed ?
[]'s

PS ... ashserv.exe is NOT the updater.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/ashserv.exe-451.html

I know. But I've never caught it phoning home before.(my
firewall detected various attempts to contact avast.)
I do not auto-update, I see no reason for this to happen.

 

[VanguardLH]

The executable ashserv.exe started phoning home, I've had
avast installed for years and this never happened before.
Anyone know what changed ?
[]'s

PS ... ashserv.exe is NOT the updater.

When is its license due to expire? Right-click on the tray icon, select
About, and look under Registration. Although there is a free version of
Avast, they require you to register to continue using past the month
trial period. They also expire the license (once you get one by getting
a product key) after about 13 months. Unlike other free anti-virus
programs, Avast require you to register with a month and to re-register
each year.

When you caught the event in your firewall, to WHERE was ashserv.exe
trying to connect? It might've been only locally (some firewalls do not
mask out localhost connects) or to check for networked drives (which
would've been in your own intranet and perhaps was a broadcast message
that wouldn't have gotten past a gateway or router to get outside the
subnet for your host).

Without knowing to where the process was attempting to connect, no one
even knows if it was phoning home or looking at something local to you.
Making a network connection does not necessarily equate to phoning home.
For example, maybe you configured Avast to use SMTP to e-mail alerts.
Well, it has to connect to the specified SMTP mail host to do the e-mail
procedure. You might have the option enabled to send a report file and
it gets sent to a mapped (network) drive or to one using an UNC path to
another host's drive.

 

[Shadow]

The executable ashserv.exe started phoning home, I've had
avast installed for years and this never happened before.
Anyone know what changed ?
[]'s

PS ... ashserv.exe is NOT the updater.

When is its license due to expire? April 2010
Right-click on the tray icon, select
About, and look under Registration. Although there is a free version of
Avast, they require you to register to continue using past the month
trial period. They also expire the license (once you get one by getting
a product key) after about 13 months. Unlike other free anti-virus
programs, Avast require you to register with a month and to re-register
each year.

When you caught the event in your firewall, to WHERE was ashserv.exe
trying to connect?

It only happened 2 or 3 times. And stopped. The only provider
I have running is the Standard Shield. All the others were not even
installed. I am monitoring however. I waited almost a week, before
posting this.
If it happens again I will write down the IP.

It might've been only locally (some firewalls do not
mask out localhost connects) or to check for networked drives (which
would've been in your own intranet and perhaps was a broadcast message
that wouldn't have gotten past a gateway or router to get outside the
subnet for your host).

It was definitely external. An internet address.