Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: cimmind on December 06, 2009, 04:13:26 PM
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Hi..
After the false positive fiasco, many people's computers would have been left unusable and required major repair work and investment of time. i just hope no one around the globe lost precious data because of the mistake.
I have lot of regards for DavidR, but for once i am thankful i did not follow his advice and never put on automatic updates.
In medicine there is a principle of "First do no harm, before setting out to do good". Others may have asked this question, but was this disaster not preventable. Does Avast really not run tests on test setups before releasing a vps update?
What steps are being taken now? Because a cursory surfing of the net has shown this particular fiasco being held up now as a reason for not using avast as a antivirus program choice.
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Did you not read the post on what happened, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51783.0, which clearly shows that VPS Updates are meant to be scanned, this one slipped through the net by someone failing to follow that protocol.
If users also followed the same principal of first doing no harm as I'm always banging on about instead of deletion much less harm would have been done, if this sounds harsh, it isn't intended to be. Unfortunately users are more likely to click delete as their first option and you have none left.
I don't know where you get the never put on automatic updates in relation to avast from as I have VPS Updates set to Automatic in avast and Program updates to Ask (the avast defaults) When I first got wind of this on the forums, I even did a manual update so I would have the 091203-0 VPS and ran a scan and I didn't get a single alert.
That for me was lucky, but a disappointment as it was my intention to fire off false positive reports for those detected that I knew to be FPs and hopefully alert those monitoring such reports to the problem.
Some valuable (if painful) lessons have been learnt on both sides.
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Does Avast really not run tests on test setups before releasing a vps update?
Sure they run.
What steps are being taken now?
Read the thread pointed by David.
I really think the dangerousness of having the updates on manual is higher than having it on automatic.
I used to have even the program update on automatic. But on beta, I have dropped this to "Ask" since some betas have problems on my machine.
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Thanks for pointing out that thread DavidR. I had actually not seen that.
I agree, whatever happened was really unfortunate. Those (if any) who lost data, and those who wasted several hours.. any amount of apologies cannot possibly help them.
Its better to learn the lessons and move on.
I am sticking by Avast. I hope others too.
Edit..
Shouldn't the thread linked to by DavidR be made a sticky?
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Edit..
Shouldn't the thread linked to by DavidR be made a sticky?
no, I don't think so, this would stigmatize Avast on its own forums and the content of this thread corresponds to something that hopefully exceptionally happened. Read it ;)
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Look again..it is a "sticky". ;D
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yeah may be not for long :D