Critical! AVAST (and AVG) are stopping video streams from local USB cameras

[chris...]

Hi,
I think any components that can make captures are likely to encounter problems with avast.
Finally, rather the programs (signatures) of these devices.
As we can see here and on the forums of other languages, there are quite a number of relevant devices (TV tuner, webcam, alarms, ...)
Let's wait for tomorrow's update.

[NON]

It seems there was a problem with some webcam apps which avast could block. This will be fixed with a VPS update on Tuesday. It didn't affect well-known webcam apps (Skype, ...), but only new/uncommon webcam apps, this was caused by a bug in our rating system.

Thanks for the comment, pk. I'll test with my own web-camera tomorrow.

[suk]

The issue with blocking [some] webcam programs was fixed in the latest virus definition update.
Can you let us know if it fixed your issues? Some people reported that the issue was in streaming (which we couldn't reproduce) rather than viewing the video, so I just want to make sure we've covered all these aspects.

Thank you for reporting all these details, it really helped to diagnose the problem,
Pavel

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Thank you for your response. This has been fixed in OmniJoin.

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Latest VSP update fixed our videophone software's local screen issue as well. Many thanks.

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Problem is fixed with the latest update.

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Getting reports that it appears to be fixed with OBS Studio as well.  I apologize for getting worked up earlier.  Thank you very much for fixing the problem and communicating.

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Does anyone know if this has been fixed for iSpy? This has caused a major issue for iSpy users.
There was a CRITICAL thread on iSpy about this aswell.

I have completely removed AVAST and I was about to go the Zone Alarm Antivirus way (since I already had the ZA firewall) - it was almost time to say goodbye to AVAST forever after all this years - since this issue was just incredibly serious for me.

Please let me know if its fixed for iSpy and then I will re-install AVAST - otherwise I dare not risk.
Thanks

[DavidR]

Does anyone know if this has been fixed for iSpy? This has caused a major issue for iSpy users.
There was a CRITICAL thread on iSpy about this aswell.

I have completely removed AVAST and I was about to go the Zone Alarm Antivirus way (since I already had the ZA firewall) - it was almost time to say goodbye to AVAST forever after all this years - since this issue was just incredibly serious for me.

Please let me know if its fixed for iSpy and then I will re-install AVAST - otherwise I dare not risk.
Thanks

See Reply #32 above  https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=201702.msg1392597#msg1392597.

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OK. I will re-install and try iSpy tomorrow. The reason I asked is because I assumed, maybe wrongly, that AVAST is trying to block spyware from secretly monitoring your webcam device - thus they created a white list of "allowed" software that can use the USB Capture device. I thought maybe they thought they have fixed it by just adding softwares mentioned in the complaints, to their white list. Thus was my question whether iSpy is on that white list?
What I am hoping then is that they have completely removed the AVAST capability to block ANY application from accessing the webcam.
Hey AVAST guys, I hope you have learned from this episode...its been disastrous and I don't understand why you did not see this coming? I wasted many days and precious hours. We were all going mad in the iSpy forums until someone in there pointed us towards AVAST / AVG forums. The absolute LEAST that you should have done is stick on a warning on your homepage about this problem or ensure that everyone using AVAST suddenly gets some sort of message/popup in their software telling them about this nasty issue. It shouldn't have been for me to waste my time and come hunting for you.