Author Topic: Your Wifi May be Risky  (Read 12402 times)

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Your Wifi May be Risky
« on: July 27, 2016, 08:57:46 PM »
Good Afternoon

     I have Avast on a tablet here.  I've used avast for years (despite the uptick of ride along and unwanted "extras" in the free version, but I digress) but I have a problem now I hope can be helped.

Avast is scanning the wifi I connect to.  I occasionally get "WifiName may be dangerous" or now how it "may be risky"  Look I wanted avast for an antivirus.  Not to "Boost phone" - "Test your Speed" or "Stay Connected Anywhere" to name a few.  Antivirus.  Plain and simple.  I want to disable avast from trying to scan my wifi.  I am more than capable of determining things myself, and administer my own network here and elsewhere.  Amazingly I do not see an option to turn on Wifi Scanning.    Not in Settings / Protection, or even notifications.  I can turn off speed check notification and turn off notification that a network has never been scanned before, but that's not it.  And I don't want to just turn off the notifications, I want to turn off the bloody functionality!  I despise software that decides that it will do what it's going to do and that's that.    So how do I disable that functionality?  While at it how do I disable the functionality of "Boost Phone"  I don't want it spending resources tracking what's happening on my tablet.  If it can tell me how many tasks it thinks it should kill, then it's doing what it shouldn't be doing and IT needs killed.

I'd appreciate the help before I have to move away from avast.  I usually recommend it to people.  Lets hope that doesn't have to stop too.

Thanks for your assistance :)

Offline Eddy

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2016, 11:11:36 PM »
avast has been more than "just a av" for many years, just as other tools are.
av is for a long time a misnomer.
Tools like AMS have been more than just a av for a long time.
True viruses are really rare nowadays.
Change of winning a lottery with millions of participants and only one price is much larger than getting a system infected by a virus ;)

Scanning the wifi connection is (as you should know), part of having a decent protection/security.
If you (as you say), more than capable of determining things yourself than you should have solved the problem and avast would not tell about the risk as there would be no need for.
Change the wifi name to something that is not considered as (possibly) dangerous and avast will not mention it anymore.

AMS scans a wifi network when it is first detected.
If everything is find to be ok, it scans it every 4(?) weeks.

You can't disable the wifi scanning and there is no need for.
If you install software to help with protection only to turn it off, you might just as well not install it at all.

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #2 on: August 23, 2016, 11:05:33 AM »
I ran into this as well.

Scanning the wifi connection is (as you should know), part of having a decent protection/security.
If you (as you say), more than capable of determining things yourself than you should have solved the problem and avast would not tell about the risk as there would be no need for.
Change the wifi name to something that is not considered as (possibly) dangerous and avast will not mention it anymore.

AMS scans a wifi network when it is first detected.
If everything is find to be ok, it scans it every 4(?) weeks.

You can't disable the wifi scanning and there is no need for.
If you install software to help with protection only to turn it off, you might just as well not install it at all.
Well, I face the same issue as OP - it's nagging me about my home Wi-Fi as well every now and then (could be your stated 4 weeks - still more often than never as I would prefer). The network is reasonably well protected and I am the admin and know there are no risks inherited in the setup. When elsewhere, I know risks implied in connecting to an unsecured network and won't meddle with others' setups obviously. I don't need the AMS to check every few weeks whether the router has been reset to admin:admin - I know it weren't. And even if it was, I don't care about Wi-Fi security - I don't do anything important through plain http or other unencrypted connection.

I don't want to turn the security off, as you implied in your closing statement - I merely want to disable the parts of it targeted at users lacking my knowledge of security in [networking - browsing - Android - pick your own] and keep the rest helping me. If it won't allow me to and keep treating me as novice in security, it's an unnecessary nuisance that will eventually get ridden of.

So, Avast Mobile Security developers, please let me disable the Wi-Fi check feature! (at least for my home network)
« Last Edit: August 23, 2016, 12:40:35 PM by LuH216 »

Offline hermansky

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #3 on: September 01, 2016, 01:14:25 PM »
Hi guys,
you can easily disable this feature in Notification settings - "Potential Wi-Fi issues". It means you won't be notified when you get connected to unknown Wi-Fi. Obviously, if you open app's UI, there will be still available notification that status of Wi-Fi is risky or unknown (because we don't wanna lie you are safe :)), but you won't be notified during typical daily phone usage.

Offline LesF

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #4 on: September 02, 2016, 07:59:49 AM »
I don't want to turn off warnings about unknown or potentially unsafe wifi connections.  But when I say my home connection is trusted, I would expect the app to retain that acceptance and not drop it every 4 weeks (or whenever).  I said I trust this one, why start bugging me about it again?

Offline Eddy

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #5 on: September 02, 2016, 09:26:10 AM »
Some people want it, others don't.
There is nothing wrong with checking things once in a while (in this case every 4 weeks).
I rather see a message every 4 weeks that everything is still as it should than to find out later (too late) my network was compromised because I did not ran a manual scan.

Offline Quibbler

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #6 on: September 09, 2016, 12:08:47 AM »
Hi guys,
you can easily disable this feature in Notification settings - "Potential Wi-Fi issues". It means you won't be notified when you get connected to unknown Wi-Fi. Obviously, if you open app's UI, there will be still available notification that status of Wi-Fi is risky or unknown (because we don't wanna lie you are safe :)), but you won't be notified during typical daily phone usage.

Thanks for this tip - didn't have the wits to work that out!

I've had an issue I can't prove and no time to investigate other than do as per tip above.

My router is a TP-Link Archer D2 only six months old. I have it set up to usual advice and couldn't figure out why every so often I couldn't log in. I'd get the login page but that would freeze after I entered my password and nothing other than a hard reset of the router would let me back in as default admin. Then I'd restore my config.

After a few months of this I was about to argue with the seller until I had an idea...what exactly happened when I kept hitting that red warning on my mobile that my wifi might be risky? Never could ignore a big red warning so was always obediently giving it the okay. Was there a connection? So I stopped hitting it. Kept logging into the router every day to see if the previous regular lock out repeated. No return of lock out! Months of peaceful rootering since. ;D

No idea what the wifi scan does, but I think it vexed my router. Can't prove it, mind.

Now I can turn off the red warning on my mobile and live in peace. Never run the network scan from my pc now either - too scared to upset the router.  :-\

Offline Eddy

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #7 on: September 09, 2016, 08:20:33 AM »
A warning is just that (or at least should be).
It never will/should block access to your router.
The wifi scan is just that, a scan.
It doesn't change things on/in your router.

Try this :
- login to your router (it should still work with your current settings)
- logout
- enable the notifications
- login to the router

If this doesn't work (the last step), I'm (pretty) sure avast would like to get one or more log files from you to investigate what is going on.

Offline Quibbler

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #8 on: September 10, 2016, 02:56:52 AM »
The wifi scan is just that, a scan.
It doesn't change things on/in your router.

Try this :
- login to your router (it should still work with your current settings)
- logout
- enable the notifications
- login to the router

If this doesn't work (the last step), I'm (pretty) sure avast would like to get one or more log files from you to investigate what is going on.

Okay, I need to grovel especially as long term fan of Avast.

Did as advised. Could log back into router without problem ???

Only other variable since last lockout freeze (apart from being scared to hit the red warning in my mobile) was I updated the router firmware last time i was locked out but never dared try the avast scan again. I had tried every known tweak to get back in and only a hard reset worked. Couldn't face the hassle.

Maybe the router's old firmware was flaky?  Life's too short to find out why it kept freezing me out. Don't wear tinfoil hats so never thought it was outside interference...

Only goes to show an idiot and Avast scans maybe aren't compatible...  ::)

Offline Eddy

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #9 on: September 10, 2016, 08:31:15 AM »
We will probably never know what the problem caused.

It could have been :
- only the firmware.
- been avast (if you used another version as you do now)
- combination of the two.

I would say, simply enjoy that everything is working again. ;)

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #10 on: September 29, 2016, 12:18:58 AM »
I don't want to turn off warnings about unknown or potentially unsafe wifi connections.  But when I say my home connection is trusted, I would expect the app to retain that acceptance and not drop it every 4 weeks (or whenever).  I said I trust this one, why start bugging me about it again?

This is *exactly* what bothers me about avast. If I applied unknown sources, I'm glad that avast notifies me to turn it off. Networks, however, are too frequently being flagged. I connect to multiple known safe networks and it seems I am constantly warned they 'may be risky'. If they were risky, believe me, I would know. I don't want to disable this completely, just mark known safe networks as safe. It's almost enough to make me want to uninstall because it occurs with so much frequency. I can only assume that Avast sees different WAP's which triggers the 'may be risky' notification.

Offline Tereza V.

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Re: Your Wifi May be Risky
« Reply #11 on: September 29, 2016, 10:39:02 PM »
Hi, the notification should disappear as soon as you scan the network. Then it appears once a month (a standard security element, just in case the network settings gets changed).