Thanks for this question as it provides more insight to what I have suspected is going on than the answers so far. I also need assistance with this new problem from the last update. Avast won't allow me to proceed on a website I've used easily in the past that I upload my invoices to. I've tried both Chrome & Firefox and Avast has taken away my auto-login to this page (http://intranet.manascisaac.com/) and I find this totally unacceptable. When did the software not allow the user the option to quarantine or permit?
@russ18:
This is my first foray into AV software forums, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I think threads like this seem to be less about customer service and getting one's own questions answered by experts, and more about info-gathering and -sharing between the AVAST team and other subject matter experts. Which is fine with me, now that I get it.
Also, I have to keep in mind that my product is AVAST FREE ... that is, it's
free. So I guess I don't have much of a right to complain if it doesn't have all the features I'd like it to. It does make me wonder, tho, whether functions like the ones you mention -- prompting for and permitting exceptions rather than auto-blocking, and quarantining rather than deleting -- are features of the paid-for AVAST product. I'd hope they were. I'd also like to have more insight as to what is identified during scans; I configured mine to save the scan logs to a named file, but after scanning I wasn't able to find it (and I searched very aggressively). Maybe this, too, is a feature of the upgrade product.
That said, it's fascinating to follow the links provided by these guys in their back-and-forthing. Kind of like listening in on air traffic control channels.
My own, ignorant interpretation is that javascript seems to be a sort of embedded macro in web pages that calls for content in an active way (and not just as a static placeholder) and creates, if not managed carefully, a vulnerability; perhaps it can be made to call for the wrong content or divert user inputs or something like that. Could be that the "out-of-date" JS here complained of hasn't been patched/protected, so these guys opt in favor of blocking web pages (or page components) that still contain the vulnerability. My take on the latest salvo is that there's a major exploit of this vulnerability just now emerging on WordPress sites ... which would seem to suggest that their concerns are well-founded. But that's just me reading between the lines.
Also, it seems to me that Pondus -- who actually did reply to your question (thumbs up) -- never sleeps. Although I don't think he/she's actually a Bot.
