Active Virus Shield

Has everyone confirmed 100% that this product in no way tracks browsing and phones home etc.? I'm not talking about the AOL toolbar that you can deny upon installation of AVS, but AVS itself.

I may have to give it a try with the concerns of Antivir's cleaning/disinfecting abilities.

 

Just think, if AVS comes bundled with whatever form of spyware, that could hurt Kaspersky´s reputation as a security vendor.
The risk is too great.

 

NOTHING, NOTHING would surprise me.

 

Then why even consider using it? AOL AVS is clean, however you could always spend $40 and support a top tier AV company such as Eset or Kaspersky.

 

AOL and other AOL products like AIM come with a spyware called Viewpoint

 

AOL and AIM do install Viewpoint Media Player using the file viewmgr.exe to run it. It is said not to be spyware but to the point.AVS is clean,does a good job and does not install Viewpoint or it's exe file.No spam either from AOL.I have used AVS and like it as it's free and has KAV engine.

 

AVS without the funny toolbar is clean. You can try it but I don't use it currently and I don't think it uses the latest KAV engine.

 

People should seriously redefine words like adware and spyware...

 

@RejZoR

I agree with that. Now-a-days a lot of legitimate programs have phoning home setting auto configured during the installation. We need to manually uncheck them later.

 

Actually i meant that adware is not even nearly the same as spyware.
Ad suported legit tools always have adware, which is legal and user knows about it. Spyware is basically illegal, user doesn't know about it and it's often collecting data without users knowledge.

 

@RejZoR

OK now I got your point.

 

Its not really the matter of reputation at all, its more about the money that comes in. AOL is not so bad by itself and AVS seems good enough without any adware/spyware. The point about reputation may be true, but when BitDefender licenses its engine to iDownload (a known ad/spyware developer) for inclusion in their product called VirusHunter, then they certainly would have considered their reputation when licensing the engine. Since VH is still alive, I guess money takes the first precedence over reputation and profile of licensee.

So, it is entirely possible that a product may use some great engines and still come from a not-so-reputed vendor and can perform suspicious activities. However, I do not think AOL is doing this at the moment as it is a simple rebrand of KAV with no AOL-specific development efforts in the product.

 

What's the latest with Kaspersky's new heuristics that were supposed to be super duper and to be included in updates to AOL AVS? Has that happened already or will it happen in the near future?

 

it hasnt come to kav/kis.6.0 yet but should come soon to all the platforms
lodore

 

While they are working on the heurisitics for KAV/KIS I haven't officially heard that this specific function would be included in AVS. Until that happens I wouldn't count on it in a future AVS update.

 

Unless its a separate module or appears as a program upgrade, it will be included for all products using the Kaspersky engine. Even if it is not, the next major product version will most likely include it as the new versions are made with newer software development kits which include the latest features.

 

I can see it now, AVS eats its self alive and dies because Kaspersky has detection for AOL malware.....

Don't install the AOL tool bar, AVS is safe.

 

No, that might not happen...............it won't be a simple update of ca.avc like the present heuristics, thats for sure and i'm also almost 100% sure it won't be released to all clones because of that. Unfortunately i'm sworn to secrecy and can't tell more than it will be a big step up from the present heuristics.

 

Does AVS force you to delete other antivirus products installed on your machine? It kind of hints to that in the FAQs on the AVS website, saying it will detect and prompt you to uninstall other products. I'd like to use it as a backup scanner to Antivir.

 

cant you install avs first then install antivir and disable the guard if you really want to do that?
lodore

 

I use Antivir realtime and AVS as on demand with zero problems.

 

In that case, it should at least be released in the next major product version (2007, 2008 etc.) of the clone AVs as the new versions will be developed with new SDKs as I mentioned before. Would that be possible?

 

At least u can tell when it will be released approximately!

Thanks

 

No, i can't because i would be slowly tortured if i did!

 

thats no fair thou because i want those better heristics!=D
lodore