Comments on: AVG Toolbar has become malware

By: Richard-mitchell

Richard-mitchell — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:44:00 +0000

I absolutly argee. I too have used AVG for a long time and recommended it to friends and colleauges, but no more. Anti virus soft is there to protect my computer, so it is shoching to realise it is invading my computer with out my permission. Even althought my licence still has some months to run I am diching AVG.

By: cotsweb

cotsweb — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 11:00:06 +0000

Hi Pogle,
Free Anti virus offerings seem to follow the same path over a period of years from a useful free product to bloatware to malware.
I am still pretty happy with the paid for version of Avira on my work PC but I have noticed the changes you mention on the free version on our family PC.

My current favourite is Panda which seems to work well and is quite unobtrusive. But commercial pressures may well make it follow the same path as AVG and Avira, nothing is really free.

By: Pogle

Pogle — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:22:50 +0000

Hi Cotsweb,
Yes, I used to use AVG, for many years – until they brought out iirc v8.0, with a popup (when part of the reason I’d used AVG was no popups!) making it appear that there was no more free version. It fooled my sister – who’d been using AVG on my recommendation; she bought the full version, thinking she had no choice (as the popup was clearly designed to do). I got her to cancel the purchase and bought a NOD32 license for me, her and our dad, for 2 years. By the time that was up I’d figured Avira Antivir free was good enough so didn’t renew. However, now Avira – as I’m sure you know – have squandered the trust they’d previously earned, with the Ask toolbar and some registry booster they used to describe as malware (scareware?). I followed the widely publicised instructions for stopping the nag to install the Ask toolbar (on XP) only to find it came up again in other – non-administrative – profiles anyway! So not only will I never go back to AVG, I’ll never go back to Avira now either! I expect we’ll all either go back to NOD32, or get the identically-priced Kaspersky, which currently seems to be behaving better than NOD32. I’ve long considered the 2 the 2 best AV products available (just that once upon a time you could get free ones that were ‘good enough’).

By: cotsweb

cotsweb — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:39:55 +0000

Hi Ken,
Sorry I can’t help you with this, I haven’t used AVG for a year or so now and never on Windows 7.
We are currently using Avira and Panda and both seem to be working ok without causing too many problems with day to day operation of the computers.

As I said in my original article, my solution would be to uninstall AVG and try a different anti-virus package.

By: Ken Chowder

Ken Chowder — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:39:25 +0000

Hi Cotsweb — you live in a nice place. I have an AVG question; though I know you uninstalled it, you might somehow know the answer. I just downloaded AVG 10. When I did that, it dismantled a feature of Windows 7 I like, which is that in 7 when you place the cursor over a toolbar icon, it shows you a miniature version of the page that you’d come to if you clicked on it (or in Word, if you have multiple files open, it will display all the open pages in miniature form). Now it just shows a less descriptive version — like the title of the docs in Word instead of an image of them. I can’t System Restore for reasons too complicated to mention here. Any way you know of where I can change this AVG behavior? TIA — Ken Chowder

By: Jeannie

Jeannie — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:00:27 +0000

I am using AVG free version on my computer and it has continually reset my toolbar to AVG and my homepage. Thanks for the heads up on this program. They need to learn to play friendly with others :0). Microsoft has certainly gotten fined for forcing their program; hopefully AVG will too. Just to become what they should be; friendly.

By: Carol

Carol — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:31:32 +0000

Thank you so much. This information on how to get rid of AVG making Yahoo my default search engine was excellent. Thanks so much for the help. I am now back to google and a happy camper!

By: JasonC

JasonC — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:35:45 +0000

Awesome! Thanks! I couldn’t work out how to do this. Thanks!

AVG has become such nefarious malwaare, I’ll have to look into some of those alternatives.

By: cotsweb

cotsweb — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:54:18 +0000

Sorry; I haven’t used AppGuard so I can’t comment on it.

By: Sammie

Sammie — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:55:48 +0000

Hey there cotsweb! Just figured I’d say hello… I recently uninstalled AVG also; it is adware & I tried out the toolbar (just to be fair), but I wasn’t feeling it. I’ve been trying to avoid Yahoo! toolbar from being installed on my computers for some time now! How annoying!

Just a thought, have you ever done a review for AppGuard? I would be interested to know what you think about it. (I have been trying to find a free alternative to it but so far no luck. Thanks!