A bit more info about the new malware URL blocking feature:
1. the
www.gooogle.com link is just a
test URL that will be removed from the database before the product is officially released. Now I think it was not the smartest one to pick because meanwhile (it must've been in the last couple of weeks) Google itself bought the domain and is redirecting it to its main page (this is not a DNS thing, it's a HTTP "Object moved" thing I think).
2. Indeed, the feature is available only for NT based systems, i.e. NT4/2000/XP/Vista. I'm not sure we've actually tested it on Vista 64, I'll have that checked (but it is definitely supposed to work there once the product is officially released)
3. It is our intent to populate the URL database
only with URL's hosting
just malware (especially binary malware). This means that the current plan is to not use it for blocking
pages. To that end, it doesn't make much sense to have Network Shield send a HTML content similar to the Web Shield blocking message (as it wouldn't be rendered in the browser anyways). Also, because of this, I'm not sharing solcroft's concerns (see above on page 1).
4. Technically, the feature works on both DNS and HTTP level. That is, full domains are blocked on DNS level while finer-grain URLs only on HTTP.
5. It's actually quite a good idea that we could use the Scanned Count / Last Scanned / Last Infected fields of the Network Shield provider to display info about the URL filtering engine. We'll look into that.
6. I don't believe it's necessary to actually have a separate check box that would turn URL blocking on/off - as frankly, the Network Shield isn't doing that much extra work besides the URL filtering now.
7. If you started experiencing unexpected lags/lockups in your browser after installing this beta, chances are it is indeed related to this new feature. It would be very useful if you could work with us on solving this issue, which we definitely hope to fix before the product is released.
BTW for those who're having issues with avast (not) registering in the Windows Security Center (WSC). I'd assume all of you are running Vista SP1. Starting with this new build, we're using the new Vista SP1 WSC interface. This is a new code, and may indeed contain some bugs. It would be helpful to get as much information about the issue as possible so that we can try to also resolve this asap.
On a side note, the WSC problem is in no way related to the Network Shield / URL blocking issues -- these are just two separate things.
Thanks
Vlk
