Welcome to RCF - WHF

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

I just got a security threat from AVG on my google home page. I reported it. That was weird. I am getting more and more of these threat alerts lately.

Nightrider · Sep 25, 2004

Yesterday, Jaddon got an alert when she went to the ImageShack site. By the time she managed to bring it to my attention, it appeared that ImageShack had cleaned up their problem. Any site can potentially be hacked at any time, including the Google home page. I'm sure that since they are so popular, hackers are constantly searching for security holes that they can breach...

munky2

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

and I just got another one on another site. They just keep coming.

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Well if you get infected hopefully Comcast will let you know.

http://4fxearth.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=653104

dontknow

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

I just got another one. This is getting old, so I clicked to visit the page anyway and it looks to be just fine. I took the site title and did a google and AVG has it green as in good to go, no threat. These must be false alarms. AVG seems to be having a hard time getting it right. The warning in google search doesn't work at all, and the constant threat alerts appear to be false alarms.

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

sounds like AVG is following in MaAffee's footsteps:

Yes, thousands of small business web site owners are shaking their heads wondering how in the world McAfee Site Advisor can ruin it's business by rating it as a malicious web site. And now they are wondering how in the world Yahoo can simply put its head in the sand when it comes to the inaccurate ratings they publish in their search results. For me, the site that I have spent eight back-breaking years buidling is now being torn down by a false positive RED rating (for supposed spamminess) by Site Advisor (happily and blindly republished by Yahoo) and a McAfee support team that won't act.

http://siteadvisorclassaction.blogspot.com/2008/06/mcafee-site-advisor -run-amuck.html

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Yes, AVG is definitely broken right now, I've been reading about false positives. Too many excellent programs are "improved" until they become useless.

Crying or Very sad

fishead · Feb 09, 2005

This is from last year, but none the less:

Funny, I’ve probably posted the most potential problems with this lame technology and I’m sure I know why I’m not invited to work with them because the only real solution to the problem of LinkScanner is the elimination of LinkScanner altogether.Checking the data being loaded into the browser in real-time via a transparent local proxy server is the only true security solution that doesn’t create more problems than it solves.However, they don’t want to hear this because they bought that stupid LinkScanner which was a massive waste of money, complete marketing hype, and when turned on at millions of customers machines becomes a network DDoS event.For those that have missed some of my posts on this topic, here’s a couple of highlights:1. Their fix to "cache" the pages downloaded to stop some of the DDoS issues is completely bogus because it’s the sheer volume of unique IPs attacking sites via LinkScanner, not the number of pages being downloaded, which is the real problem.2. The "cache" fix they implemented that I’m seeing in log files is DDoS x 2 because they ask for a HEAD before every GET. HEAD is used to check to see if the page changed and you’re supposed to ask for a HEAD after you have already cached a page, not before the first GET, so this idiot logic has made the problem twice as bad.3. LinkScanner will click on things that might violate your AUP or even the civil code where you live. Not all searches result in clean results, such as someone searching for "water sports", intending to look for water skiing, might end up with results about golden showers or worse. Imagine being reprimanded at work for visiting this golden shower site using the company internet, or trying to explain to the feds that you really didn’t click on the pedophile honeypot site, it was your LinkScanner trying to save you from malicious sites.4. LinkScanner also uses the "One Page Free" which many subscription or members only sites give to allow their content to be indexed in Google. LinkScanner hits the page first and the one free page is used, the surfer gets met with a subscription or registration page instead.5. AVG is exposing their customer information via LinkScanner. Although many people have dynamic IPs that often change, if the surfer visits the same site LinkScanner hits within a few minutes the browser can be tagged with a cookie for future tracking as an AVG user. Imagine what malicious things can be done with this information when you least expect it, marketing to switch the customer to a new AV at minimum, can you say affiliate program?6. Last but not least, the technology easily exposes itself so the malicious sites can simply spoof it therefore the potential for protection is limited at best.And on and on and on...It’s very already flawed proven to be a hazard to both webmasters and surfers alike.Which leaves only one question:Why is AVG, historically great AV company, throwing away their reputation and alienating customers on such a flawed concept?Bite the bullet, write off the loss, toss it in the bin, and apologize to your customers and webmasters would be my advice for whatever that’s worth.

http://sphinn.com/story/54536