Is AVG 8 not as it should be?

[-pops-]

Doing some cleaning of my "media" computer today and SuperAntiSpyware found nearly 900 items of malware. Fortunately none of it was very severe and I cleaned it out easily but it did come as something of a shock as I normally only get very little malware and nothing at all on that machine as it is hardly used for the Internet.

My main computer which is used all the time on the Internet had only two items of malware - which is pretty much the norm and not unexpected. The third machine had none.

What was different about the first machine? It's the one on which I've recently installed AVG 8 - the others are still on AVG 7.5.

Anyone heard any similar reports or am I just unlucky in this instance?

I'm seriously looking at an alternative.

[rong]

I am using it and did a A2 scan yesterday that came up with nothing as usual. When I put SuperAntiSpyware on my computer when everyone was raving about it, it wanted to take things out of some of the software I had on my PC at the time that was causing no trouble so I gave up on it as it was trying to hard. so perhaps that is what happened to you.

I used to use AVG antispyware along side A2 before it was amalgamated.

[Irene]

I had only AVG free 7.5 anti-virus before updating to AVG 8.0.

Since the new installation, AVG finds heaps more than the previous version, which only seemed to find tracking cookies.

[AlanHo]

You raised my curiosity. Since I built my computer a few months ago I have only used Windows Defender and AVG Anti Virus (7.5 and now 8)

I just downloaded, updated and ran Super Anti Spyware and it found 11 tracking cookies. All related to porn sites I have not visited. However - it was a useful exercise because it gave away what a friend's grandson was up to when I let him use my computer the other day to do some school research because his computer is not working.

I won't tell her what her dear grandson has been up to - but instead I think I may ask him about his school curriculum in a bit of detail............. :lol:

It might be worth him providing at least a couple of free car washes to keep me silent........

[andsome]

I have been using SUPERANTiSpyware for ages now, and never had any problems with it. :D

[-pops-]

I, too, have used Super ASW for a long time and this is the first occasion that I have found this. It's also on my other two machines. As I tried to point out, this great number of "things-I-would-rather-not-have" was only on the machine that had been updated with the latest AVG.

They could, of course, be false positives so I'll have another look in a few days with another malware seeker and see if it comes up with anything similar.

[rong]

I usually run C Cleaner before doing a scan with anything so maybe that's why I don't get cookies, although A2 checked 45 cookies and I only have 15 saved in C Cleaner

[Dencandy]

900 items! That's a lot of malware, -pops-. Presumably it was in different groups - cookies, adware, etc. What categories did it fall into? Yesterday I looked at CCleaner and it counted 8 cookies. Without changing anything I ran A-squared Free and it counted 30. I wonder why there is a difference like this?

A few weeks ago I changed my security setings to block all cookies, 1st & 3rd party, but allow session cookies. Whenever I access a site that says I must enable cookies(e.g. Amazon), and if I really want to use that site, I simply add it to the allow cookies list on Internet Options>Privacy>Sites>Block/Allow (and add it to the allow list on CCleaner) without changing the generic 'block all cookies' rule. Then I have full access to the site, no problems. It's worrying that organisations like Amazon tell is we must change our Internet Options to "Allow cookies" to order books without saying that we can allow cookies for that site only. I'm sure many people think this means they must change their internet settings to accept cookies for all sites.

Now I only get session cookies & cookies from sites in the Allow list, which keeps them at a very low level.

It'll be interesting to know what results you get from a scan with a second anti-malware app. Please let us know.

I've had my say elsewhere about AVG8 and have now ditched it on this desktop. But I still have version 7.5 on the laptap and will keep it so long as AVG provides updates.

I don't have Super ASW so can't comment on it.

[AlanHo]

Are you an archaeologist - always digging up old stuff...?...

[-pops-]

Interesting that this has been dug up.

I can report that I became so disillusioned with AVG that I've removed it completely from my machines. Apart from the problems previously reported, my paid for version of AVG began to play up and refused to update. Now, an out of date antivirus is near to useless and nothing I could do would bring it back into current state. AVG help was next to useless and even a re-install didn't cure the problem.

I can't be bothered these days doing loads of investigative work as to why programs have stopped working. Out they come and are replaced with something which does work. I'm now using Drive Sentry on all my machines and which I've reported about before.