Business users have been notified (in advance) about the end of life. So yes, the virus definition updates for program versions 5 - 8 hav stopped.
The EoL has been postponed by three months (compared to what I mentioned) because of some delays on our side.
=SKY=, you seem to imagine that supporting those old versions of the program is "for free". The reality is, however, that supporting those ancient versions prevents further development of protection for new program versions (if not exactly prevents in specific cases, than definitely slows down). In other words, supporting old program versions results in worse protection for new program versions.
So I think it's understandable that we prefer to better protect 99.x% of users, rather than maintaining an infinite support for those few users who, for some reason, stick to the old versions. Furthermore, AV software has to be updated to keep up with current malware trends - and I mean the code of the program, not just virus definitions. Avast version 9 has been released in 2013... so with version 8 you are missing 7 years of development; you can't really expect a full protection there anyway. I believe we've kept the old versions supported significantly longer than what their actual usability was.
Igor, no one expects Avast to support anything "for free". The reality is that Avast has no problem selling us subscriptions for a product that was scheduled to be cancelled. The reality is the Avast did not - never - at no time - notified me that EOL was coming, or that EOL had been extended, or that the extension had ended.
In fact, your tech staff knows nothing of this. This is the reply I received for a support ticket:
Avast Endpoint Protection now has an End Of Life of December 31st, 2019
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2190355-avast-endpoint-protection-now-has-an-end-of-life-of-december-31st-2019Your own support staff has to refer to a Spiceworks forum for information, and that information is incorrect.
And regarding a refund for the unusable subscription, another Avast employee responded:
We are not able to submit refund requests if it is outside 30 days of purchase due to the Avast refund policy. Let me know if you need anything else.Avast has acted disgracefully in this. Are you really able to defend this? The only alternative to maintaining the VPS distribution for the AES product until the end of the subscription is to replace it with a vastly inferior business product?
Again, Avast has acted disgracefully - selling subscriptions for a product soon to be discontinued, and cancelling the subscriptions prior to expiration, and offering as a substitute a useless and inferior product, and refusing to issue refunds, and dismissing the mess as a business priority.
I've migrated six sites from Avast to BitDefender as their subscriptions expired, and now I'll migrating the last two. I can only hope that others who have been burnt by this practice do the same.
Igor, any further comment?
One more time - a disgrace.
