Avast and malware

bolterixus · 7 Jun 2016 at 20:14

Hi all

I have been using Avast for a while and revently a friend told me that it can activate malware on browsers. Is that true?

suenstar · 8 Jun 2016 at 08:59

Sounds like your friend is talking nonsense.
While it does install a plugin on most browsers to allow it to actively scan websites you visit for risks (which you can disable if you want), it's not installing any malware to your browser.

Avast is one of the top rated free anti-virus applications and the paid version ranks fairly high too, so it'd be a bit strange for it to get that sort of recognition if it did something negative like that.

bledd · 8 Jun 2016 at 09:03

unfriend your friend

linktoinsanity · 8 Jun 2016 at 11:57

Absolute rubbish. He's probably talking about the browser plugins as suenstar says, but that's not malware.

Casdawer · 8 Jun 2016 at 12:49

Do yourself a favour and get rid of Avast and install Sophos Home

I've tried all the main 'free' AV's and this one is by far the best.

I've done numerous testing and found Sophos came on top on most detections.

Craig321 · 8 Jun 2016 at 12:56

http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php

Sophos is quite low compared to Avast. The performance impact of Sophos is also quite high compared to others.

Casdawer · 8 Jun 2016 at 13:11

Interesting.

I've never had an issue with performance on any of the machines I've installed it on and the test virus packages I used we're all detected apart from one.

The best thing about Sophos is the remote management side of things where I can control all the machines through the web interface. Avast has to be managed client side.

There is nothing wrong with most free AVs and most offer the same level of protection so go with what you think is best

We use Symantec Endpoint Protection at work and I'm responsbile for managing it on 20000+ machines and I can tell you now, Symantec AV products are still as bad as they were 10+ years ago so as long as you don't go Norton, you'll be fine!