Monday, February 1, 2010

AVAST! Is Sailing Off My Computer

For a long long time I did not run an anti-virus program on my computer, due to believing that a virus could not activate without my active help. Since I don't click on anything without knowing what I'm clicking on, I figured I was fine.

And I was. Til I accidentally clicked on something while up in Tacoma. I quickly realized my mistake, but not before an annoying "fake" anti-virus thing was telling me I had viruses and needed to install the fix immediately.

It was fairly easy to fix that Tacoma problem. The computer virus problem was actually the least of my Tacoma problems, but I digress.

I run Windows Defender and a Malware Scanner. And every time Microsoft does one of its critical updates, Microsoft runs a worm removal tool.

So, I thought I was fine not running an anti-virus program. An additional reason is I've always found anti-virus programs to be as annoying as the problem they are supposedly stopping from happening.

And then my websites on my former bad webhost, IX Webhosting, started getting hacked. I was told I should run an anti-virus scan on my own computer to make sure it was not causing the hacking. That seemed absurd to me, but I was ready to try anything to fix the problem.

I was told AVAST! was a good, lean, anti-virus program. So, I downloaded, installed and ran it. No viruses were found.

Months ago I moved my websites to a new host and have had no more hacking woes. AVAST! has become my main computer woe. Several times a day AVAST! slows my computer down while a new version is installed.

But the really annoying thing that AVAST! is doing is to one of my websites, stulangley.com. AVAST! is claiming stulangley.com is a malicious website infected with malware that will damage your computer. The stulangley.com website was hacked only once while I was having that problem, with the hacking fixed quickly. AVAST! flags none of my other websites that got hacked, including my durangotexas.com one which had the hacking problem multiple times.

I had my new webhost check the stulangley.com website for any malware. I was told the website is totally clean.

So, AVAST! has no credibility with me and once more I'm thinking anti-virus programs are as bad a thing as the thing they are supposedly protecting me from.

Bye bye AVAST!

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