AVG's updated policy explains how it can sell users' browsing and search history data to advertisers

[infiltrator]

I've never used AVG before, so I am glad I am not being affected by this garbage.

 

[DelJo63]

Before you jump ship, understand the difference between Reactive (the most common) and Proactive protection.

• Reactive:- find, repair or delete AFTER the infection has occurred.
• Proactive:- attempt to avoid the infection in the first place.

Once an infection is on your HD, the only choice is to scan, scan, scan ... awe heck reinstall. On the other hand, spinning some cpu to avoid accessing trojans and other infections has far less impact at the time of access and saves $$$$$ in time and effort by not needing to scan, scan, scan ...

An AV product which scans email and web links is proactive and effective and thus allows you to avoid the so called realtime protection of (again) scanning every program you launch over and over and over.

Sure it's a best practice to run a scan on the HD - - but when? I've reduced mine to once / month.

 

[Sancticide]

People who can reformat and reinstall an OS are typically the MOST tech competent..and if you were actually as smart as you think, you'd have known that.

The truly competent should know both methods and in which situations one is preferable over the other. Using disk/partition images is an example of working smarter, not harder.

 

[captaincranky]

The truly competent should know both methods and in which situations one is preferable over the other. Using disk/partition images is an example of working smarter, not harder.

Well, this is mostly a semantic point. Imaging a drive and
then installing from the image, IS "reformatting and reinstalling", simply doing it ahead of time.

However, since you're not about to render a 1 terabyte image of you OS, programs, and years and years worth of files on your machine, you surely do need to take care the malware, isn't among those files. Since, the first time you open an infected video or PDF, the fun begins all over again.

Before you jump ship, understand the difference between Reactive (the most common) and Proactive protection.

Welcome to the age of the social entitlement ninny. So much freeware gets lost each year, simply because the free versions are too good, and for most people sufficient. Hence nobody buys the paid version. On behalf of myself, I'm as guilty of that as the next person. I don't however, think I'm entitled to it. Although I am, very, very grateful for it.

Speaking directly to AVG Free, I've used it successfully for years. During the same time period, I've listened to all the FUD blown up against it, by every know-it-all on this website. "Clever things", keep getting repeated over and over again. For example, "AVG means ain't very good". Right. :rolleyes: I've had Avira, which is mostly adware these days. I've had Avast also, which dies as easy as anything else when confronted with competent malware. Mercifully, Norton and McAfee don't have free issues.

In any event, AVG flat out warns you in advance they're going to sell your information, and in the very next breath, tells you they're going to allow you to opt out of it. :wink: :wink: :wink:: My question is, how do you manage to pass yourself off as a "victim", when you've been freeloading for years, and if you're the least bit "smart", you can likely freeload for the next decade or so as well?

Even regarding the "doomsday scenario", whereby AV manufacturers are writing the malware they pretend to defend against, WTF does it matter, when they provide the "free medicine" to cure what ails ya?

Besides, "NoScript" is a huge part of my protection package. And it's not an "ad blocker" per se. If your malware needs a script to run, and somebody else's ad needs a script to run, then the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. No skin off my a**, I don't like children.

 

[DelJo63]

jobeard said: ↑
Before you jump ship, understand the difference between Reactive (the most common) and Proactive protection.

Welcome to the age of the social entitlement ninny. So much freeware gets lost each year, simply because the free versions are too good, and for most people sufficient. Hence nobody buys the paid version. On behalf of myself, I'm as guilty of that as the next person. I don't however, think I'm entitled to it. Although I am, very, very grateful for it.

hmm; can't see how your response is related to my cited comment - - but that's me. My point was not Free vs Paid, but clearly the approach taken by an effect AV to create protection.

 

[captaincranky]

hmm; can't see how your response is related to my cited comment - - but that's me. My point was not Free vs Paid, but clearly the approach taken by an effect AV to create protection.

I was directing my remarks specifically at your quote, "before you jump ship". I should have reduced the response to that specifically, but I felt since you went through all the trouble of writing an informative and lengthy entry, I'd be cheating you if I did. As it was, I had already removed about 2/3rds of your post.

Although, I hardly think any of my post was, "off topic"

How about if I include some of this material:

I've never used AVG before, so I am glad I am not being affected by this garbage.

Thanks for letting me know. I am just uninstalling AVG from my system.

Would that help clarify my stance?

 

[Sancticide]

Well, this is mostly a semantic point. Imaging a drive and
then installing from the image, IS "reformatting and reinstalling", simply doing it ahead of time.

However, since you're not about to render a 1 terabyte image of you OS, programs, and years and years worth of files on your machine, you surely do need to take care the malware, isn't among those files. Since, the first time you open an infected video or PDF, the fun begins all over again.

Right, but it's still much less work than installing Windows from scratch, installing drivers, and running Windows Updates, etc. Plus, if you partition your drive right (or if you boot from a mid-size SSD), you'll have just your OS on the boot partition. That way you can just restore C:\ from either a "clean" image captured when you first installed Windows, or a newer one that has most of your programs (you could update that image like once a month or once a quarter). Since you're not imaging a whole 1TB drive (maybe you set aside 200GB for OS and programs as C:\), those images will be relatively small. Then just full-scan your data partitions/drives/backups with multiple anti-malware programs to be safe.

 

[Johathen Luke]

Use Avast instead of AVG