Avast Behavior Shield

I already have a few Avast Shields disabled, but was wondering if it would be reasonably safe to disable the "Behavior Shield" as well?

 

This is the reason why shields shouldn't be optional. Ppl keep on removing them in some crazy idea that this will give them some imaginary performance boost.
It makes no difference if you use them all or none. Only thing that you do by disabling individual shields is that you're lowering the overall avast! protection capability.

 

Avast is not my favourite app but I have to agree with RejZoR, better install all shields. Performance will be the same and security will be enhanced.

 

Giving users the ability to configure and control the software that is running on their device is the hallmark of an ethical and respectful software developer. It should be encouraged rather than discouraged. Having said that though... yes, this means that users may shoot themselves in the foot. Freedoms are like that.

Here is some reading material for the OP: https://www.google.com/search?q=Avast "Behavior Shield" site:forum.avast.com, https://www.google.com/search?q=Avast disable "Behavior Shield" site:forum.avast.com

 

The behavior shield in Avast 6 was somewhat of joke. I believe they "beefed" it up in Avast 7. All these realtime behavior checkers use hueristics to detect 0 day malware. There is an inverse correlation between sensitivity of the behavior processing and web browsing performance. The higher you set the sensitivity setting of the behavior checking, the lower your web browsing performance. Also higher sensitivity yields more false positives.

You will have to play with the behavior shield settings to find one that is acceptable to your web browsing satisfaction.

 

This isn't necessarily true. Let's say for example that your Web Shield is creating a conflict with your firewall, and as a result actually lessening your protection. Such a case has just been brought up in here recently, in fact. All these extra features/layers can create conflicts.

Many people don't realize that to get the Mail Shield to actually scan their emails they must disable the encryption in their mail clients (not recommended, btw). Talk about curing the disease by killing the patient.

So saved resources aside, these extra layers/shields can actually lessen your protection, not strengthen it. Not to mention the fact that these performance boosts are hardly "imaginary" at all. They're quite real.

 

If people cannot configure software without breaking their boxes ("shooting themselves in the foot")... they don't belong anywhere near a computer in the first place.

They'd be better of buying some Penthouse magazines and some stamps to send real mail.

 

Nonsense and clearly don't understand the technology behind it. And i doubt you'll gain as much security with firewall as you lose it by not using Web Shield. So far i haven't had any specific conflicts with firewalls unless if you're still insisting on outdated and old firewalls like Outpost 1.0, Sygate Firewall Free etc.

Also, what difference does it make is Mail Shield acts as a mail client, using encrypted connection and then passing it unencrypted locally to the actual mail client compare to getting the mail encrypted directly to the mail client?

avast! Mail Scanning through SSL/TLS
Mail Server (remote, encrypted) -> avast! (local, encrypted) -> Mail Client (local, decrypted)

Regular mail delivery
Mail Server (remote, encrypted) -> Mail Client (local, encrypted)

So, what's the difference? It's already on your system when it gets decrypted. So what difference does it make, it's a local communication, it's not like someone will have any higher chances stealing your mails than by tackling with the mail client directly which you also have on the system either way. avast! just behaves like a mail client, doing all the communications and then it just passes the actual e-mails to the mail client of your choice. I'd say this is probably more secure than getting the mail directly to mail client. It's harder to temper with avast! than with mail client...

 

Any number of half-truths do not a full truth make.