AVG Internet Security 7.5

[Guest]

This is the new package from AVG (only released a couple of days ago) that
includes integrated antivirus and antispyware protection together with a
firewall. I installed it yesterday and I'm in the process of running a free 1
month trial. At the moment Defender's RTP is switched off while I get the
hang of this new system, but I'll report on how it gets on with these new
companions when I switch it back on.

First impressions of the system: I had a lot of trouble setting it up and
getting back online (but that may have been caused more by AOL software than
anything else) but it's now up and running. I presume that the Ewido engine
is in here somewhere, but all visible traces of Ewido are gone, I'm afraid.
So the extra tools of Ewido aren't there (as far as I can see), and its
visual elegance has been replaced by the rather clumsy AVG clunky look. Shame.

A full scan of my hard drive took a long time (50 minutes - about double the
time that Norton used to take). Even at the low priority scan setting, the
use of resources meant that I couldn't do anything else sensibly at the same
time, so I think I'll be restricted to scanning at times when I'm not using
the computer.

Right at the end of the (otherwise clean) scan a box jumped up and shouted
in big bold letters: 'VIRUS FOUND!' I thought Oh no!! Then I looked at the
details - and discovered that what it had actually picked up were 5 cookies!
This is daft - I hope they change that. In fact I'll write and ask them to!
Apart from the inaccuracy of labelling cookies as viruses, it's far too
alarming a response for something so harmless.

The firewall seems to work - Gibson Research Shield's Up common and service
ports tests gave it a perfect stealth rating. And so far it's intercepted
everything that's tried to get out, and asked me about it.

My main concerns at the moment are two:

The first is about updates. The information seems to flash on screen and
disappear very quickly, so I can't see the details of what's going on. So I
don't feel quite comfortable with that at present.

Secondly, the moment I venture beyond the Basic Interface, I'm plunged into
a mass of incomprehensible technobabble, most of which makes no concessions
at all to the lack of technical expertise of the typical user, and the User
Manual is similarly unhelpful. I know I bang on about this all the time, but
a little more care taken about this aspect of things would be of enormous
value to millions of people, and this is an opportunity lost. Big failure, in
this respect - but of course AVG are hardly alone in that. (The irony of
course is that the now defunct Ewido had pretty well solved all that side of
things!)

More to follow, particularly when I switch Defender back on.

 

[Robin]

I am happy you made it back Alan,
WD should work fine with it
AVG Firewall will prolly pop up for you to add it
Make sure you check off "permanently add it" or it will keep popping up till
you do

Did you uninstall Ewido first or did you let AVG uninstall it?
The scan of your HD will take longer because AVG checks EVERY file on your
computer
You can set it up to do a user scan (which is a quick scan for a daily scan
or set it up once a week to do a full scan)
I find things only slow down a bit when I do a complete scan but I still can
work, when I had Norton I could not work at all.
BTW at least it shouted up at you when it found a "Virus" even though it was
a cookie. Better it should scream at you then do nothing.. and if you you
write them at (e-mail address removed), and tell them what happened
they might just fix this in an update.

As for the updates, on the main screen at the very bottom right hand side,
it will show you the version and the date it did the update for the
antivirus and firewall. When you click on the icon for the Antispyware on
the main page it should show you that one too. I am not sure how the suite
looks but you should have two icons in the right side on your task bar- one
with a white S in it and one plain.

And as a last comment- welcome to technology- nothing is easy anymore when
owning a computer.

robin

 

[Robin]

and to add to this

I do love AOL <g> . Make sure you permently allow it- that could be why it
kept popping up
You might have to find all the AOL exe's and put them in the firewall.

Click on the icon in the right corner of your taskbar to open the program
Highlight AVG Firewall
Go down to the bottom and click on the Configure Button
Go into Applications
Look for AOL and make sure there is a green check mark next to it and it
says "Allow" at the bottom of this window-not ASK.
If AOL is still giving you problems you might have to go into Program
Files/AOL and add all the exe's related to AOL in the firewall part of AVG.
robin

 

[Guest]

I am happy you made it back Alan,
WD should work fine with it
AVG Firewall will prolly pop up for you to add it
Make sure you check off "permanently add it" or it will keep popping up till
you do

Thanks. I made that mistake (i.e. not checking the 'permanently add' box)
when trying to run AOL at the beginning. So AVG kept intercepting each AOL
component, and AOL kept crashing while I tried to deal with the interception.
So I learned that lesson the hard way!

Did you uninstall Ewido first or did you let AVG uninstall it?

I uninstalled it first, along with my major cleaning-up session.

The scan of your HD will take longer because AVG checks EVERY file on your
computer
You can set it up to do a user scan (which is a quick scan for a daily scan
or set it up once a week to do a full scan)

At the moment I can't figure that out. I mean - I can see how to set up SOME
kind of alternative user scan, but I have no idea yet how to decide what kind
of scan that should be. Also, to set up a scan schedule (other than a daily
one) means venturing into the dangerous jungle of the 'Advanced' interface,
where I don't speak the language. At the moment I've disabled scheduled scans
until I understand more about what I'm doing. Till then I'll just run manual
scans at convenient times (which is what I did with Norton anyway).

I find things only slow down a bit when I do a complete scan but I still can
work, when I had Norton I could not work at all.

That doesn't bother me, since I'm already accustomed to scanning when I'm
not using the computer. However, I see there is an even lower priority scan
option which I ought to try.

BTW at least it shouted up at you when it found a "Virus" even though it was
a cookie. Better it should scream at you then do nothing.. and if you you
write them at (e-mail address removed), and tell them what happened
they might just fix this in an update.

Yes, but it's too scary for anyone setting this up for the first time -
PARTICULARLY for the millions who don't know that a cookie isn't a virus. The
rate of coronaries will go up unless they fix it. And I will write and tell
them.

As for the updates, on the main screen at the very bottom right hand side,
it will show you the version and the date it did the update for the
antivirus and firewall. When you click on the icon for the Antispyware on
the main page it should show you that one too.

There's a whole string of numbers at bottom right which seem to be (in this
order): engine version number; virus database number; spyware database
version; and finally a date and time whose significance escapes me (it's
04/10/2006 15.45, which was yesterday, but at 15.45 AVG wasn't installed on
my computer!). It took me a while to figure out what those numbers mean, and
this is another thing I'll suggest to them that they need to improve.

I am not sure how the suite
looks but you should have two icons in the right side on your task bar- one
with a white S in it and one plain.

There's just one icon, Robin - a square divided into 4 smaller yellow,
black, green and red squares. I presume this is because the antivirus and
antispyware scanners are integrated. There's no way to run them independently
as far as I can see.

And as a last comment- welcome to technology- nothing is easy anymore when
owning a computer.

Ha! Thank you! Absurd though it is, I feel like a pioneer!

 

[Guest]

Look for AOL and make sure there is a green check mark next to it and it
says "Allow" at the bottom of this window-not ASK.
If AOL is still giving you problems you might have to go into Program
Files/AOL and add all the exe's related to AOL in the firewall part of AVG.

There are now three AOL components in there with 'allowed status', and I
think that's the lot (I disabled aoldial.exe a year ago because it created
such havoc), so my persistence obviously paid off in the long run!

 

[plun]

Ha! Thank you! Absurd though it is, I feel like a pioneer!

Congrats Alan !

You still have your exam left... Steve Gibsons Leak test....

http://www.grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm

Simulate to catch crazy trojans.... (maybe AVG doesn´t like
the program but it´s safe)

My TM PC Cillin went totally crazy about Gibsons file...

regards
plun

 

[Robin]

i will put together a small faq to show you how to make a user test- i
cannot do that today but i will tomorrow and email it to you
robin

 

[Guest]

You still have your exam left... Steve Gibsons Leak test....

http://www.grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm

Thanks Plun. I'll try it - but I've had enough unnerving experiences these
last couple of days, so I'll wait until I feel more comfortable with this new
package before I try testing it to its limit!

 

[Guest]

i will put together a small faq to show you how to make a user test- i
cannot do that today but i will tomorrow and email it to you

Thank you Robin, that'll be helpful. I was looking at it again just now, and
I don't find it at all clear what to do. (I did however discover the useful
'system areas' test, so I'm making progress of a sort.)

 

[Guest]

updates. The information seems to flash on screen and
disappear very quickly, so I can't see the details of what's going on. So I
don't feel quite comfortable with that at present.

Well, it updated itself fine this morning, with a nice clear panel popping
up that I couldn't miss, with full details of the size of the update file,
and a little report at the end about what exactly has been updated. Full
marks for this, I think.

 

[Guest]

More to follow, particularly when I switch Defender back on.

I hasven't switched Defender's RTP back on yet, but both programs appear to
scan the system without protesting at each other (unlike Norton, whose log
was always full of complaints about Defener's intrusions during a scan).

It seems that this Internet Security suite lacks some of the functionality
of the separate programs. For example, there seems to be no provision for
automatically removing tracking cookies (which Ewido has and, I believe, its
newly relabelled version called AVG Antispyware). This is a bore, because of
the fuss made when tracking cookies are found during a scan. Also, as far as
I can determine, there's no provision for scheduling anything other than a
daily scan - there seems to be no way to schedule a weekly one for instance.
(If there is, it's well hidden.)

 

[Guest]

More to follow, particularly when I switch Defender back on.

Defender's RTP is now on, and so far, after a couple of startups and
shutdowns, I can't see any compatibility problems at all between Defender's
RTP and the AVG Security suite's Resident Shield, with both running happily
together. Again, full marks to AVG.

 

[robin]

tada!
robin

Defender's RTP is now on, and so far, after a couple of startups and
shutdowns, I can't see any compatibility problems at all between
Defender's
RTP and the AVG Security suite's Resident Shield, with both running
happily
together. Again, full marks to AVG.

 

[Guest]

Right at the end of the (otherwise clean) scan a box jumped up and shouted
in big bold letters: 'VIRUS FOUND!' I thought Oh no!! Then I looked at the
details - and discovered that what it had actually picked up were 5 cookies!

The cookie story, continued:

I sent a couple of emails to AVG about aspects of this (increasingly
annoying) cookie problem, and received quite detailed replies.

First, they explained to me how to exclude folders from a complete scan. I
could follow the explanation, and have now excluded the cookie folder from
complete scans.

Second, they said I could perform the same exclusion operation on the Shell
extension scan. Now this scan is a real pain. Here's a file; right click on
it; 'scan with AVG'; the file is duly scanned, but also AVG goes on to scan
the registry and some system files, and (of course) nearly always finds some
tracking cookies, which it reports, in fairly spectacular fashion, as VIRUSES
(I kid you not), and this is the last thing you need when all you wanted in
the first place was to scan this file (which is perfectly clean)and get on.

Anyway, apropos their proposed solution, it turns out that it isn't possible
to exclude the cookie folder, nor the additional quick system scan, from a
shell extension scan - there's provision to exclude certain file extensions,
but not specified folders. (Does anyone know if I can use the file extension
exclusion to exclude cookies somehow?)

So, I've sent another email asking for more help. Although I can learn to
live with these foibles, they do make using AVG Internet Security
unnecessarily messy. And it seems positively paranoid about picking up
tracking cookies!

 

[plun]

Alan D skrev:

And it seems positively paranoid about picking up
tracking cookies!

Hi Alan

Not at all, junk is junk and it will always be just junk.

Please read this report from one of the most knowledge
persons about this issue.

http://www.vinnylingham.com/specialreports/cookiedetections/

More Ben Edelman
http://www.benedelman.org/

So tracking cookies should be directly moved to the dustbin
despite of
some business actors which believes this is OK.

regards
plun

 

[Guest]

Alan D skrev:

Not at all, junk is junk and it will always be just junk.

Yes, I agree that tracking cookies are junk, Plun, and let's get rid of them
(I clear out cookies with Ccleaner every day). But they aren't viruses - and
that's what AVG wrongly identifies them as.

If there was a setting (like Ewido has) that would allow cookies to be
removed automatically, that would be fine. But there isn't. So every time I
scan a single file or folder, the program makes this big fuss about cookies
["VIRUS FOUND!!"]. Believe me, after this has happened a few dozen times, it
becomes very annoying. It's pointlessly intrusive and distracting.

 

[plun]

Alan D skrev:

If there was a setting (like Ewido has) that would allow cookies to be
removed automatically, that would be fine. But there isn't. So every time I
scan a single file or folder, the program makes this big fuss about cookies
["VIRUS FOUND!!"]. Believe me, after this has happened a few dozen times, it
becomes very annoying. It's pointlessly intrusive and distracting.

Hi

Agree that this is wrong to alarm about a "Virus" threat but
this is difficult how to scan and how to present.

Lavasoft Adaware uses a TAC ranking system.

Hopefully you read Ben Edelmans report and the funny part
with that report that it´s a sponsored one.

For me it´s totally clear that tracking cookies is "ads
stupidity",
even clearer after reading his report.

I have removed all my ads with Firefox and Adblock, I will never
let me be tracked with this junk. I cannot see any benefit
with them.

regards
plun

 

[Guest]

More to follow

Ah. Now here comes serious confusion - exactly why I've been resistent to
the idea of using any firewall other than the Windows firewall.

I'd been looking through the various ways to configure the AVG firewall,
trying to understand even some of it, and failing. I was just looking - I
wasn't aware of having changed anything at all, but it seems I must have
done, because the next time I connected to the internet the AVG firewall
popped up and said it had detected a new area which it called 'local
network'. I'm not on a network - there's just this computer - so why would it
suddenly detect a 'local network'? Of the various options available (such as
'assign profile', or various others that meant nothing to me at all) I had no
idea what to do. I read through all the 'help' I could find, but couldn't
understand any of it (seriously, NONE of it). In the end I just clicked on
'assign profile' and chose 'standalone computer', and the damn thing went
away.

But I have no idea what I've done. For all I know, I could have made a
foolish choice and rendered my system vulnerable in some way. And this is the
problem I've always had with any firewall other than the Windows firewall. If
it asks you questions that most human beings can't answer, so you have to
just guess - how is that conducive to internet security?

This AVG security suite was doing pretty well up to now, despite some minor
gripes. But this is a big thumbs-down. How do I tell if I've mucked up the
firewall, unknowingly, by making the wrong choice?

 

[Guest]

For all I know, I could have made a
foolish choice and rendered my system vulnerable in some way.

Well, this is serious. I just tried the Gibson Research Shields up test and
failed it spectacularly.

What on earth should I do now? Can anyone help, please?

 

[Robin]

understand,
any firewall program has to be a bit complicated. It is protecting your
computer and not allowing anything out that it knows or doesn't know should
go out. Rule of thumb- allow it ONCEe then go on google and try researching
what it allowed.. If you know it is safe you can allow it permenately.
Have you read the pdf I sent you- that is a little less complicated and
explains the firewall better.
you can also go here and pick up the pdf for avg+ firewall- it also explains
the firewall part.

http://guru0.grisoft.cz/softw/70/fi..._Firewall/User_manual/avg_afw_uma_en_75_3.pdf

When I had Norton antivirus with firewall in 2005 I found when i installed
it, I lost my network. I realized after hours of digging in the program and
online documentation (and not from symantic either) that I had to put the
router's ip address into the My network zone" and as soon as I did this I
got full control of my network again.

I did not want to go through that again so i immediately put it in when i
installed AVG's..

A firewall program is a learning device. It is learning your computer and
you need to learn about it. Here is one example.

http://www.cert.org/homeusers/HomeComputerSecurity/examples.html#firewall

Scroll down to task4.

A firewall program is a set of rules that you create or it creates.
You should surf the net and check out different sites on how to use a
firewall program.
(btw AVG just updated me to 7.5 through its update so I am guessing I am
seeing almost the same screen as you are not)
And as for making the wrong choice Highlight Firewall (in Security Status)
and click on "Configure"
Click on the "Application" tab
Scroll down till you see the application and highlight it and click "Edit
Application"
There is a drop down box there that allows you to do several things. For
now you can click "Ask" if you are not sure you should be allowing that
application". Once you are sure you can always go back or when AVG pops up
and asks you- you can click "Allow all the time"

btw here is where you do all your rules- in these tabs. In the pdf I just
put here it explains each tab. In "System" I am betting there is where it
put the local network as a block or allow.
When viewing NEVER say OK- click "Cancel" this way nothing changes.
You had to click on something and accidently change it and that is prolly
why this happened.
Good luck
and if you need me you can email me or post here
robin